Indonesian Palm Oil Industry Roadmap Entering the Industrial Revolution 4.0

Besides the simplicity of transferring data from field to excel and making quality report of the fruits, digitalization of plantation industry simplifies the recording of worker’s attendance and simplifies field workers to process the data for wages and incentives.

In principle, the use of digital technology is replacing manual process with technology, it will reduce the operating costs, saving time on the transmission of data information, creating transparency, and prevents manipulation of report. Other than that, implementation of digital systems in the plantation sector will reduce fraudulence because it has digital control and monitoring, so it will maximize cost efficiency and increase productivity of palm oil plantations in Indonesia.

In Indonesia, the application of Industry 4.0 on plantation sector, especially palm oil, has to be applied consistently, it is expected to increase productivity, reduce operational cost, and maximize efficiency to increase palm oil exports.

Structural transformation from agriculture sector to industry sector will increase income per capita and ushering Indonesian people from an agrarian to an economy that relies on the process of increasing industrial value-added, accelerated by development of digital technology.

Digitalization of the Upstream Industry. Palm oil is one of leading commodity in Indonesia, that plays a big role on the national economic, and it contributed on the foreign exchange and employment. Growth of downstream palm oil industry in Indonesia is in line with the growth of plantation area and palm oil production as a source of raw materials. Besides producing CPO products, fresh fruit bunches also produces Palm Kernel Oil (PKO). Production of PKO grows as CPO products increase, around 10% of the CPO produced.

Digitalization of Midstream Industry. Crude Palm Oil (CPO) and Palm Kernel Oil (PKO) can produce various types of midstream product that can be produced as raw material for the downstream industry for food and non-food category. Among the midstream industry groups, it includes the fatty acid, fatty alcohol, fatty amines, methyl ester, glycerol.