Corporate Tour to PT. Astra Honda Motor at Cikarang
Yeah! Finally, It's been a while since the last post I've made at this blog. The activity that I've been through for the last several months had made me really really busy. That's why I didn't have the time to start writing this blog again until today. >_<. Well, besides I was so lazy before, haha...
Okay, let's begin with the my experience while participating the 'Corporate Tour to PT.Astra Honda Motor' at Cikarang. This event was organized by the team of Astra 1st from ITB. The event was actually held about two weeks ago, 23 May 2014. And it's FREE. hoho... Smart students at the university always seek for the free event such as I am :D
At first, all the participants were told to gather at the main gate of ITB on 8 a.m. Since that I've known one of the steering community, which is William Gumarus, that the bus will starting to be setting off at 9 a.m, so I decided to set off on 8.30 a.m from my house rent. This is not because I want to be late, but being time-effective is better! :p. It usually takes about 15 minutes to ITB. So I arrived there around 8.45 a.m. At 9 a.m the bus set off and we're ready to go to Cikarang! Anyway It takes around 2 hours to go there assuming that the traffic is normal.
Around 11.30 a.m, we finally arrived at the front office and what a damn wide-area factory! The picture here is only a small fraction of building of PT. Astra Honda Motor. Maybe around 20-30 times bigger! Can you imagine that?
Upon our arrival here, a security officer at the main office directly greeted us nicely :D (He's on the right side of the picture holding the HT device).
At first, I didn't realize that he was the security officer there, I thought that he was the manager or maybe the PIC for the corporate tour. Yeah, of course, how could people realize that he was actually a security officer with a uniform that he wears, which is not like the usual ones? And what surprises me at that time was, while we enter inside the main office, everybody working there uses the same uniform as the security officer! Even the manager or the PIC for the corporate tour! At that time, I realized that it's because of their culture there which is 'working together to achieve one same goal', so it didn't really matter what your position are, as long as you work there, you are working as a team to reach the goal of the company. I was really amazed by the culture there! After that, we had our lunch here. It's chicken roasted rice (if I'm not mistaken). And of course, it's FREE :p
After lunch, we're given a presentation by the PIC of the tour, I'm sorry but I forgot the name (he's the one standing in front of the room)
As usual, during the first presentation, he told us about the company profile of PT. Astra Honda Motor, the business model used by the company, company organizational structure, and market share of the company (which is almost 60%! What a boss!). Yeah, of course it holds a big portion of the market share in Indonesia, who doesn't know Honda? Almost everybody know that, even in my hometown, Medan, people actually doesn't call motorcycle as "sepeda motor" but they call it as "Honda". So whenever people uses motorcycle with the brand of Yamaha, Suzuki, Kawasaki, or whatever brand it is, people at my hometown will always call it as "Honda". Sounds pretty freak ya? Anyway that's how Honda's becoming the leader of the market share.
After the introductory presentation, we're given a safety procedure before visiting the plant building where motorcycle are being produced daily. The procedures overall includes using red-color cap given by the company (it's used to recognizing us as the visitor there), not entering the production area, and "no pictures allowed"?!. How come we cannot take the photo there? The main purpose of us visiting the company is mainly to visit the plant building and see the process of making the motorcycle and we cannot take the photo? Oh well, anyway it's procedure, want it or not, we as the visitors must obey... Feeling dissapointed >_<
After the presentation, we're divided into 8 groups. Each of two groups was leaded by one mentor. After that, we went to the plant building. Upon the entries inside the building, I was amazed by it's own gigantic building! Inside the building there're hundreds of operators working for the production and it is very HOT and STUFFY! I couldn't imagine if I worked there, I probably couldn't stand working there even for a day! At the first place, there is an extremely LONG conveyor belt which is used to process the making of motorcycles starting from the engine until becoming a whole motorcycle. Each part of the motorcycle was being installed by one or two operators. So every day, for about 8 hours, each operator must do their work, which is installing the same part again and again! Can you imagine how boring it is? For 8 hours and EVERY DAY? Anyway they didn't have weekend holidays, so whether on saturday or sunday, they must go to work. Arghhh.... They said that many people outside there want to work as the operators there. But I myself once again couldn't imagine working there doing the same thing in the HOT and STUFFY room, could you?
Besides, the production there was held for 24-hours a day non-stop. So there are 3 shift for the operators who works there. And each day, the production there could produce 9000++ motorcycles! It means that in 10 seconds, puff! one motorcycle is made. Pretty amazing isn't it? Anyway the plant building we visit produces the matic-type motorcycles (which is mainly Honda BEAT-type).
After visiting the production of the motorcycle, we visited the plating room. Anyway, most parts of the motorcycle are also being produced by the company, which includes the velg! They said that honda is the first company in the world who produced it's own velg for motorcycle. Really cool isn't it? FYI, this place is really noisy since it's the place to produce plating velg.
After an hour tour from the company, we finally returned back again to the presentation room. What a relief! It's much more cooler here, haha.. -- of course it's inside the main office. From here, we started a discussion about what we had seen during the plant tour. I'm sorry I didn't really remember about the discussion since it's two weeks before I started to write again in this blog. Anyway it's really interesting and fun having the corporate tour in a big company such as PT. Astra Honda Motor. I'd really like to thank for the team of Astra 1st ITB and the corporate party for inviting us to visit the company! Thank you all!
*All of the photos above are due to the courtesy of William Gumarus