Human Resource as The Biggest Challenge Towards The Industrial Revolution 4.0

Some of the experts consider Indonesia requires to improve its human resource skills in the manufacturing field towards adapting to the era of Industry 4.0.

In the panel discussion at ConnectTechAsia titled "Digital Innovation in the Manufacturing Sector in Indonesia", a number of technology observers and players leaked some biggest challenges towards the automation era.

Chairman of the National Association of Information and Communication Technology Entrepreneurs (Aptiknas) Fanky Christian said we still have low skilled talents in the manufacturing field. It happens not only in Indonesia but also in the Asia-Pacific region.

In order to adapt towards Industry 4.0, Christian highlighted the urgent need to improve talent's skillset. He said the challenges will make different impacts on the more tech-friendly environment sectors, such as telecommunication.

"Entering the Industry 4.0, digitize and digitization become two main elements towards efficiency. Before we get there, manufacturing companies should use two approaches, it's upskilling and reskilling, in order to stay adaptive," he said, Wed (12/5).

In the same occasion, the Chairman of Indonesia's Big Data & AI Association, Rudi Rusdiah saw a different obstruction in terms of technology, it's the lack of implementation of tech-solution, such as big data and Artificial Intelligence (AI). It shows that many companies didn't consider technology adoption as important for the business.

In fact, Industry 4.0 is the data exchange and automation trend where the implementation will be very related to the sophisticated technology adoption, such as Internet of Things (IoT), cloud, big data, and AI.

"The number of experts in the big data or AI sector isn't large. It's hard to find a good data scientist in Indonesia. The development cost [big data and AI] also extravagant," he added.

Before even discussed the kinds of sophisticated technologies as mentioned, cloud adoption as the basic tech-solution is in fact low. Quoted from Gartner, the shifting from data to cloud is estimated to increase to 28% by 2022.

"In ours [service], there aren't many implementations for manufacturing sector. They are mostly from banking institutions. Whereas, the cloud has been very useful in terms of asset revitalization, agile innovation, and digital economy growth," Telkom Telstra's VP Product Management Cloud & UC, Arief Rakhmatsyah said.

Another highlight is from Deputy General Manager Mitsubishi Electric, Ivan Chandra on the importance of ideation to solution and innovation that is scalable. Thus, the industry can calculate the costs incurred to be in accordance with the desired results.

Indonesia is currently in the preparation stage. The Ministry of Industry even has made a roadmap of Making Industry 4.0 stated that this revolution will be a big step for the manufacturing sector to amplify Indonesia's economy.

The research recently published by Informa Tech has revealed some of the challenges in the manufacturing sector. In terms of technology, the main challenges are (1) the cybersecurity and backup data (57%), (2) upskilling human resources (43%), and (3) looking for a reliable tech-supplier (36%).

In terms of business, the biggest challenges are (1) skillset for competition (53%), (2) looking for new customers (47%), and (3) following or adapting through new technology (34%).

–Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian