Synergizing various disciplines in creating innovative technologies to enhance the competitiveness

As a country with the fourth largest population in the world, Indonesia has huge opportunity to conduct business in order to become one of the largest economic markets in the world, and this condition allows primary, secondary, and tertiary goods that produced by both domestic and foreign industries could be well traded in Indonesia. However, the imbalance between supply and demand makes Indonesia to conduct over-importing foreign goods, in which actually could be produced by domestic industries. Ironically, we often export semi-finished goods to foreign countries and re-import the finished-goods back to our country. Moreover, we also import some primary products for the reason of benefiting prices, instead of choosing domestic goods that actually could increase the welfare of national society. 

As in accordance with the theme of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Meeting in 2013; “Resilient Asia-Pacific Engine of Global Growth”, it is time for the countries in Asia-Pacific region, especially Indonesia to become self-reliant country. I think this is the right time for Indonesia to become a country with high industrial productivity instead of just being a consuming country. We have everything! We have abundant natural resources and potential human capacity to support the development of this country. All we need is just high appetence and spirit to reach the advanced goals. 

This condition triggers me as a college student of Industrial Engineering to show my own empathy. We have no limitation as college students to put our effort only on studying, I think we need to put the mistakes that made by former generation behind, and it is time to conduct the synergy. 

How come? As a student of industrial engineering, I think it is better for me to make consolidation and synergy with the students of other disciplines, such as with those who study food and nutrition or biological science in order to create the innovation in food processing that could be produced by efficient and eco-friendly machines. I could make consolidation and cooperation with the students of physical science and mechanical engineering to create effective and eco-friendly machines that could be used for transforming the semi-finished products to full finished-products, therefore the products could gain extra beneficial values that could indirectly increase the GDP of our country. 

I could also build another synergy with other college students for the purpose of common goals, and this effort is highly important to minimize the divisions and differences among the college students from other departments. By realizing this conceptual framework, I think we could make Indonesia to become a country with high competitiveness in the region of Asia-Pacific. I think there are some steps that could be implemented in order to make Indonesia becoming more competitive in APEC CEO Summit.