Generative AI in Indonesia : Powering Operational Excellence at Medco Power

In this episode, Pak Imron Gazali, COO, Medco Power shares their journey towards operational excellence through AI utilisation. Learn about the steps that Medco Power is taking towards ensuring safety, enhancing reliability, and optimizing costs in their power plants across Indonesia.

Transcript

AIBP Intro: 0:02

The aibp ASEAN B to B growth podcast is a series of fireside chats with business leaders in Southeast Asia focused on growth in the region. Topics discussed include business strategy, sales and marketing, enterprise, technology and innovation.

YY Fong: 0:19

Hi, greetings and welcome to the ASEAN B2B growth podcast. In today's episode, we shine a spotlight on generative AI in Indonesia, this series of conversations with Indonesian business leaders, took place during the IBM consulting forum on the 29th of November, 2023

Irza Suprapto: 0:52

This morning, I'm joined with Pak Imran Ghazali, part of Medco Power. Pak Imran, maybe you can quickly introduce yourself as well as what Medco Power does here in Indonesia.

Imron Gazali, COO, Medco Power Indonesia: 1:02

Okay, thank you. So my name is Imran Ghazali. I'm the director and Chief Operating Officer of the battery Medco Power in Indonesia. And Medco Power in Indonesia is an independent power producer company. We are focusing on the clean and renewables, power plant or energy. The company is established back in 2004 so far, we have operated more than 3.3 gigawatt in Indonesia, across the country, within the 15 locations.

Irza Suprapto: 1:39

Yeah, okay, and for yourself, but you know, today, now, everybody, especially in the beginning of this year, everybody, is starting to talk about Gen AI, yes, and how it can be used in businesses here, I think the consumer side, I think people are quite clear. Everybody's on chatGPT, yes, but for Medco what actually are you looking at when it comes to Gen AI?

Imron Gazali, COO, Medco Power Indonesia: 1:58

Yeah. First of all, we believe Gen AI can support and make our operation more efficient, okay, from the standpoint of the IPP of the power business, we need to, basically, we aim to have three things. One is safe, yeah, safety number one, the second, how to make our plan reliable for our customer. And then the third is basically to continue improve on the cost for the running, operating power plant. So these three aims, I believe it can be supported by Gen AI so we can achieve in the faster in the safer and more efficient way.

Irza Suprapto: 2:44

Thank you Pak Imron, and when you look at implementing projects or implementing different things for these three things, how do you actually work with external technology solution providers like IBM?

Imron Gazali, COO, Medco Power Indonesia: 2:55

Okay, yeah. In fact, we have worked with IBM since a few years back when we try to develop some kind of the dashboard. So we try to basically to extract or pull the operating data from from the plan, from the site, and then put this data in our headquarter, and then we try to do it in a real time basis. Yeah, so that's, I think, the first step Medco Power initiate to as a part of the journey, what I call it journey for Gen AI, and thank you to IBM, because they also support us to develop this kind of dashboard.

Irza Suprapto: 3:39

Okay, and last question part Imron, when you look at something, a new technology like Gen AI, obviously you know your IT team should be quite familiar with it. Yes, when you talk about the business leaders or the different segments, the different business functions of Medco, how is Medco helping you know your internal people to actually learn about all these new technologies, yeah,

Imron Gazali, COO, Medco Power Indonesia: 4:02

I think this is one of the challenges, to be honest with you, the resources, yeah, and then the business process we need to adapt with this, the new way of Gen AI, and it will take some time, because, you know, people, Most of people is still not really aware with this kind of technology. So that's why we decided to take this Gen AI, step by step. The first step needs to do is the data itself. This is a very important part of the Gen AI, so we make sure the integrity of the data, when I mean integrity, is accurate, and then what kind of data we need, it has to be, I mean, support our next step for going to the more advanced on the Gen AI

Irza Suprapto: 4:52

okay, so you're taking the first few steps in the future of building foundation. Yes, technology improvement. Thank you very much by everyone for joining me today. Enjoy the rest of the conference. Thank you.

YY Fong: 5:06

Stay tuned for more insights on generative AI in Indonesia in the upcoming episodes,

AIBP Intro: 5:14

we hope you've enjoyed the episode. For more information about business growth in the ASEAN region, please visit our website, www.IoTbusiness-platform.com.