PT DAHANA’s Director of Technology and Development, Suhendra Yusuf RPN, welcomed a group of officials from the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) in support to encouragement of collaboration between industry and universities. The visit was made DAHANA’s Central Management Office, Subang, on Thursday, March 10, 2022.
In his remarks, Mr Yusuf said that ITB is the oldest university in Indonesia which turns a century old in 2020. ITB is the womb to many of the country’s prominent leaders such as Sukarno and Habibi. Mr Yusuf also warmly welcomed the visit of ITB scholars and hoped to have a Triplehelix collaboration with ITB.
“We are grateful for the visit to DAHANA. We hope that this visit can create a kind of synergy and collaboration between the industry and universities. We strongly encourage the Triplehelix concept. We always convey it to the policy makers, in this case the government, especially the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of SOEs that “the industry should not be left alone; regulators must develop some kind of bond with the industry and universities, then help complete everything,” said Mr Yusuf.
In view of the issue, Mr Yusuf continued, DAHANA, with the core business in the explosives sector, is currently developing production of propellant, which has reached the BGP mini-plant testing stage at the end of last year will be used in Small Caliber Munitions in the future.
By virtue of Presidential Decree No. 8 of 2021 on the General Policy of State Defense for 2020-2024, one of the priorities is the development of propellants, with an investment worth nearly one trillion rupiahs provided by the Ministry of Defense. DAHANA hopes to conduct information exchange with ITB, and will increase cooperation and exchange knowledge. Independence and mastery of technology in industry must be put as priority, in order to support the independence of the nation in terms of national defense sector.
This was responded by the Dean of the Faculty of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, ITB, Prof. Tatacipta Dirgantara, who explained that up to the present time, ITB continues to try to establish co-operations with the domestic industry; some successful co-operations have been made, and Mr Yusuf also hoped that such co-operations can also be established with DAHANA.
“We really hope that we can collaborate, and actually we at ITB make frequent interactions with the industry. We are concerned about why we should import when we can (meet our own need). If we can manage to map the needs of DAHANA, in the future, we can collaborate with the capabilities of ITB academics,” said Prof. Dirgantara.
