The enthusiasm for innovation at Polman Astra is rising, signaling the start of the QCC (Quality Control Circle) and SS (Suggestion System) conventions for Polman Astra employees. The event started with a briefing for the facilitators on March 1, 2018. For the speakers, Polman Astra invited QCC practitioners in the Astra Group, including Herry Patria from PT Indokarlo Perkasa, Emil Malik from PT Kayaba and Sri Prahyoto from PT Aisin Indonesia. The facilitators who participated mostly are heads of departments or section heads who expected to be the driving force for the QCC and SS activities in their respective units. This briefing was necessary, because changing the culture, especially the subordinates, to be pro-active in making improvements and consistently doing it isn’t easy. “The facilitator is expected to provide assistance in communication process within a working group because they have the ability to structure and guide the participation of group members,” said Farah, one of the members of the Polman Astra Innovation Committee, “Significant difference with previous briefing is the material comes from innovation experts who are members of the PT Astra Otoparts QCC Committee. Other than theoretical material, the participants are also had to do the case studies where they had to assess their group members in terms of technical and psychological aspects to decide who will be the next leader,” continued Farah.
Polman Astra’s management commitment to keep improve can be seen with the establishment of the Polman Astra Innovation committee which was launched at the 2017 Academic Days and currently, the team led by Harki Apriyanto has started to run its programs. With the theme of Innovation, Energy for a Better Life, Harki stated that this year is a continuation of what has been achieved in the previous year, where the improvement has started and continues to be promoted among Polman Astra’s civitas academics. On March 12, 2018 the QCC and SS convention for employees was started, taking place in the room 403-404, a kick-off was attended by all Polman Astra employees.
This year the Polman Astra Innovation Committee has also provided an application made by the best students of the Information Systems study program, through this application, hopefully it can assist Polman Astra in running and monitoring the “KAIZEN” process. There are 2 “KAIZEN” processes in the application, which is Suggestion System (SS) and Quality Control Circle (QCC). “The application can document each individual improvement activity in the SS and group improvement activities in the QCC and requires every supervisor to know the improvement activities that done by his subordinates and provide feedback to his subordinates,” explained Sisia, a member of the Polman Astra innovation committee who also a supervisor of students who built this application. “For management, superiors and committees can monitor the level of improvement activities every year. They can even know which one the most active individual or department. They can also monitor the progress of the QCC, including to what extent the QCC has been done. The application also provides standardized documents needed in the process. The searching for past data is easy, which also sometimes needed to solve a problem,” continued Sisia. Sisia hopes through this application, all employees can be motivated to do improvement.
Tony Harley Silalahi, also reminded us on how important innovation is in our lives, how the company can be huge company if all of its employees have the desire to continue innovating. For this reason, he hopes that this year the participation of Polman Astra employees in the QCC and SS conventions can increase and in the current digitalization era, he hopes that the innovation can be directed to the digital media, particularly, to improve performance in their respective work areas.
The kick off itself was marked by the hand stamp given by all employees starting from the management, as a commitment with all levels in the Polman Astra to succeed the QCC and SS conventions for employees in 2018.
video [Academic Days Polman Astra 2018] Facilitator Training