Road to Winning the INPACT 2017

Before being declared the winner of the INPACT 2017, Inspire had to undergo several phases from December 2016. They revealed how close they were to the submission deadline day on Sunday (15/01/17) before finding out the idea for their paper. They had to spend their holiday working on the paper until the day before D-day.”We finally managed to submit the paper on time but the date was postponed to the end of January,” revealed Jona. In the end, they were not disappointed by their paper since it got selected to compete on the final.

Inspire focused their paper on shipbuilding, the elaboration on construction of ships and other floating vehicles. They revealed that the topic was inspired from their last competition. With PT PAL Indonesia as the case study, Inspire devise a strategy to enhance the quality of PT PAL’s business process and to reduce business activity costs.

On the final, Inspire delivered their paper presentation before three academic jury from USU, Universitas Surabaya, and Universitas Andalas. Proper preparation bolstered Inspire’s performance on presentation and Q&A sessions. On the following day, Inspire with all finalists of INPACT 2017 traveled from Medan to Batu Bara District to attend the next phase at PT Indonesia Asahan Aluminium (INALUM). Each team was given a case study on planned retooling in PT INALUM. After going on the tour and obtaining required data, every team was given less than two hours to deliver a solution, where Inspire managed to devise a qualitatively and quantitatively outstanding, comprehensive solution. On the presentation before the jury and representation of PT INALUM, their solution was hailed by many.

The final day of INPACT 2017 saw the finalists traveled around Medan and attended a seminar presented by Chief Director of PT INALUM, the Director of Overseas Market Development of the Creative Economy Agency (BEKRAF), and Professor of Industrial Engineering Program at USU. In the aftermath announcement of INPACT 2017 winners, Inspire won the 1st place, beating many other teams including the team from Phillipines who won the 2nd place and the team from USU who won the 3rd place. “I myself did not expect we would win. But Jona and Calvin did since the MC hinted many clues,” Ilham said.

Motivated to Compete

The three members of Inspire said that they has been a solid team since their last competition in Chronics 2016, ever since when they frequently sign up to various competitions , including INPACT 2017 where they won the 1st place. Inspire has yet to compete on various competitions, and planned to use the prize money from INPACT 2017 to fund their upcoming competitions.