Jakarta (ANTARA) - Industry Minister Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita has encouraged the utilization of technology in the batik industry so that products produced from this cultural heritage are increasingly competitive.
"Technology has touched various fields and has succeeded in changing human behavior in responding to product manufacturing despite it being a skill-based product, such as batik," the industry minister stated while inaugurating the 2020 Batik Day Commemoration Series held virtually in Jakarta, Friday.
Kartasasmita noted that every technological development always promises convenience, efficiency, and increased productivity.
The minister pointed out that the type of work that earlier required a fairly large amount of physical labor, can now relatively be replaced with automatic machines.
"This is also apparent in the batik industry. Batik, which is part of the textile and clothing industry, has become one of the priority sectors in the implementation of the Roadmap for Making Indonesia 4.0," Kartasasmita noted.
The former social affairs minister stated that several countries had also applied technology to produce batik on a massive scale owing to which several batik products from abroad had flooded global markets and also entered the Indonesian market.
"This is very unfortunate, yes, part of something that is destructive to the industry, which we must pay attention to," the minister remarked.
The Ministry of Industry has currently developed a Batik application, Analyzer, to distinguish between genuine and imitation batik products.
Batik analyzer is an application that can be installed on mobile phones based on Android and iOS that is developed using Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, specifically machine learning, which is in accordance with the implementation of industry 4.0.
Despite Indonesians currently facing conditions that are far from ideal for conducting activities in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it does not mean that productivity and creativity must stop.
The batik industry is expected to adapt to various changes by fostering creative and innovative thinking through the utilization of technology and optimization of existing resources, so it can continue to move and contribute positively to the national economy.
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