At ten to seven in the morning, a line leader at a snack packaging plant stands in front of a whiteboard and writes yesterday's output beside the target. The two numbers have rarely met this month, and the production manager has already floated the idea of a Saturday overtime shift. Her crew listens quietly with coffee cups in hand, because they have heard this conversation many times before.
Watch the line for an hour after that briefing, though, and a different picture starts to appear. An operator bends to the floor every minute or so to pick up flat cartons from a low pallet. The sealing machine stops for a few seconds each time the film jams, and someone reaches in by hand to clear it. A new operator waits beside the filler for a senior colleague, because nobody has shown her how to run a product changeover alone.
Each of these moments looks too small to matter when you see it on its own. Added together across a shift, they work like a handbrake that nobody has released, so pressing harder on the accelerator with overtime mostly burns more fuel and wears out the driver. The Ministry of Manpower (Kemnaker) has been making a similar argument all year, and since September it has been testing that argument inside 20 companies.
The Hidden Handbrake
Taiichi Ohno (1988), who shaped the Toyota Production System, described improvement as the steady removal of muda, the Japanese word for waste. His list includes waiting, unnecessary motion, transport, overprocessing, excess inventory, overproduction and defects. The operator bending for cartons is making motions that add nothing to the product, while the new operator at the filler is doing the easiest waste of all to spot, which is waiting.
Seiichi Nakajima (1988) gave maintenance and production teams a shared yardstick called overall equipment effectiveness, or OEE. It multiplies availability, the share of planned time the machine actually runs, by performance against its ideal speed and by the share of good output. As a simple illustration, a machine that runs 80 percent of planned time at 85 percent of ideal speed with 95 percent good product has an OEE of about 65 percent. The short jams on the sealer rarely appear in breakdown logs, yet they quietly eat into the performance figure every hour.
Ergonomics sits right inside this arithmetic, although many plants file it under health and safety alone. The ILO and the International Ergonomics Association (2010) published Ergonomic Checkpoints, a book of low-cost fixes such as keeping materials within easy reach and setting work at elbow height. A carton pallet raised to waist height removes a bend that strains the lower back, and it also takes a few seconds out of every cycle.
Rules Already in Place
Indonesian regulation already treats these conditions as part of the working environment that employers must manage. Minister of Manpower Regulation (Permenaker) 5 of 2018 on occupational safety and health in the working environment covers ergonomic factors alongside physical, chemical, biological and psychological ones, and it expects employers to identify and control them. Government Regulation (PP) 31 of 2006 on the National Job Training System sets competency-based training as the national approach, with SKKNI, the Indonesian national competency standards, as its main reference.
The national picture shows why the government cares so much about this subject. Speaking at the launch of a productivity week in November 2025, Manpower Minister Yassierli said Indonesia's labour productivity had been roughly 10 percent below the ASEAN average for six to seven years, as reported by Liputan6.
Kemnaker Steps Inside
In late August 2026, ANTARA and RRI reported that Kemnaker would accompany 20 companies in manufacturing, health care and hospitality from September to November 2026. The programme uses what the ministry calls company-based productivity improvement, so each company gets an intervention shaped around its own operations. At least 25 trained productivity specialists, 20 instructors and 20 participants of the national apprenticeship programme are involved, according to those reports.
The steps follow a familiar improvement cycle, beginning with a baseline measurement and a diagnosis of productivity. Teams then look for root causes, draw up an improvement plan, carry it out, and monitor and evaluate the impact. The reported areas of work include process efficiency, waste reduction, workplace organisation and digitalisation. Yassierli argued that higher worker competence alone will not lift company productivity, and that governance and work processes need a thorough overhaul alongside it.
He pushed the same idea further a few weeks later, this time in a debate about artificial intelligence. At a human capital summit in Tangerang on 15 September 2026, Pasardana reported, he said that companies using AI only as an operational assistant gain about 5 percent in productivity on average. Gains of around 30 to 40 percent, he said, come when companies redesign workflows and SOPs and upskill their workers at the same time. On 17 October, ANTARA reported him saying that labour development should be oriented towards productivity, beyond settling industrial relations disputes.
Research from Indonesian universities adds a useful caution to all this optimism. Ariyanto, Jannah and Raharjo (2026) reviewed 19 studies on participatory ergonomics, where workers help design their own improvements, in Jurnal Promotif Preventif. They found a tendency towards fewer musculoskeletal complaints and better posture, while evidence of an effect on productivity was more limited and varied. The quality of implementation, organisational support and how well workers adopted the solutions explained much of that variation.
Back at the Briefing
The line leader at the whiteboard does not need to wait for a ministry programme to reach her plant. The steps below fit the baseline and diagnosis logic that Kemnaker is using, and they sit comfortably with Permenaker 5 of 2018 as well.
Measure Before Adding Hours
Record a simple baseline for two or three weeks before anyone signs off an overtime roster. OEE for the bottleneck machine, output per labour hour and a tally of short stops tell you far more than the daily total on the board. Ask operators to note the reason for each stop on a sheet beside the machine, since they already know most of the answers.
Reach and Posture
Walk the line with the operators and a copy of the ILO checkpoints, looking for every bend, twist and long reach. Raising a pallet, moving a bin closer or adding a simple chute often costs less than a single overtime shift. A participatory approach works best when workers try the change for a week and then say whether it actually helps.
Small Stops, Real Danger
The sealer that jams every few minutes is a productivity problem and a safety problem at the same time. Operators who clear jams by reaching into a running machine are taking the very risk that lockout and tagout, or LOTO, procedures for isolating energy exist to prevent. Fix the cause of the jam first, and agree in writing which tasks need the machine isolated and which can be done with guards in place.
Competence That Is Practised
The new operator waiting at the filler needs more than a classroom slide about changeovers. Write the changeover down as standard work, track who can do it in a skill matrix, and give people a safe place to rehearse critical steps before they meet them on the line. Simulators help with tasks like energy isolation, where a mistake on live equipment can carry a very heavy price.
Two Boards, One Meeting
Put productivity and health indicators on the same board, so neither side wins by quietly hurting the other. Track OEE and output per hour beside musculoskeletal complaints, near misses at the machine and overtime hours per person. A rise in output that arrives with more back complaints, or more hands inside guards, is simply borrowing from the next quarter.
Where We Can Help
An Ergonomics and Work Environment Assessment measures posture, lighting, noise and heat stress with Permenaker 5 of 2018 as its reference. Applied Ergonomics trains supervisors and HSE teams to review their own workstations with practical methods. A Machine Safety Assessment looks at guards and isolation points on the machines where short stops pile up.
For competence, Custom Training Module Development turns your own procedures into standard work, skill matrices and assessments. LOTO Simulator lets workers rehearse isolation steps on screen, and Digital Safety Simulators can be configured to your own equipment. Nusa Safety does not issue certificates or hold a PJK3 licence, so certified programmes are delivered together with licensed PJK3 partners. To discuss a specific line or site, please contact us at any time.
The Whiteboard Again
Kemnaker's pilot runs until November, and its results had not been published at the time of writing. Its starting point is already clear, and it matches what the Ariyanto review suggests, because improvement begins with careful measurement and with the people who do the work.
Picture the same line leader a few weeks from now, standing at the same whiteboard before the morning shift. The carton pallet sits at waist height, the sealer jams far less often, and the new operator runs the changeover while her senior colleague watches. The Saturday overtime shift has quietly dropped off the agenda, and nobody on the crew seems to miss it.
This article is general information and does not constitute legal advice, so please consult a qualified lawyer on how specific regulations apply to your organisation.
References
- ANTARA. (2026, August). Menaker: Perbaikan tata kelola dan kompetensi tingkatkan produktivitas. ANTARA News. https://www.antaranews.com/berita/5708571/menaker-perbaikan-tata-kelola-dan-kompetensi-tingkatkan-produktivitas
- ANTARA. (2026, October 17). Menaker: Pembangunan ketenagakerjaan berorientasi pada produktivitas. ANTARA News. https://www.antaranews.com/berita/5793661/menaker-pembangunan-ketenagakerjaan-berorientasi-pada-produktivitas
- Ariyanto, J., Jannah, F., & Raharjo, A. (2026). Ergonomi partisipatif dalam meningkatkan ketahanan kesehatan dan produktivitas pekerja, sistematik literatur review. Jurnal Promotif Preventif, 9(2), 158-176. https://doi.org/10.47650/jpp.v9i2.2492
- International Labour Office & International Ergonomics Association. (2010). Ergonomic checkpoints: Practical and easy-to-implement solutions for improving safety, health and working conditions (2nd ed.). International Labour Office.
- Kementerian Ketenagakerjaan Republik Indonesia. (2018). Peraturan Menteri Ketenagakerjaan Nomor 5 Tahun 2018 tentang Keselamatan dan Kesehatan Kerja Lingkungan Kerja.
- Liputan6. (2025, November). Produktivitas pekerja Indonesia 10% di bawah rata-rata ASEAN. https://www.liputan6.com/bisnis/read/6207834/produktivitas-pekerja-indonesia-10-di-bawah-rata-rata-asean
- Nakajima, S. (1988). Introduction to TPM: Total productive maintenance. Productivity Press.
- Ohno, T. (1988). Toyota production system: Beyond large-scale production. Productivity Press.
- Pasardana. (2026, September 16). Menaker: Adopsi AI harus berorientasi pada manusia dan tingkatkan produktivitas. https://pasardana.id/news/2026/9/16/menaker-adopsi-ai-harus-berorientasi-pada-manusia-dan-tingkatkan-produktivitas
- Peraturan Pemerintah Nomor 31 Tahun 2006 tentang Sistem Pelatihan Kerja Nasional.
- RRI. (2026, August 24). Govt boosts company productivity to strengthen Indonesia's competitiveness. Radio Republik Indonesia. https://rri.co.id/en/national/2674868/govt-boosts-company-productivity-to-strengthen-indonesias-competitiveness
