Paper

Atlas of wooden furniture industry in Jepara, Indonesia

Roda, Jean-Marc, Cadène, Philippe, Uzair Fauzan, Achmad, Santoso, Levania, Guizol, Philippe

2007

Overview

In this document, we study the industrial district of Jepara, Indonesia. It is specialised in furniture production, for the Indonesian consumption, as well as for worldwide exports. We summarize the main features of the dynamics of the firms involved in the Jepara industrial complex with a quantitative analysis of flows among them, and between them and markets elsewhere. A specific method of spatial analysis has been designed, and merged with other existing methods for the analysis of forest production networks and social networks. This method allows to take in account and to accurately assess the number of very small workshops that can not be evaluated by classical methods. We demonstrate that the extent of wood industry and activities is considerably underestimated by both the official statistics and the existing literature about Jepara. We present the results through synthesis maps. A total of 15 271 units of production have been identified, employing approximately 170 000 workers in Jepara. The activity generates creates a considerable revenue: between 11 900 to 12 300 billions Rp/year of added value (about 1 billion Euros/year), that is to say between 70 to 78 million Rp/worker/year. The district of Jepara consumes between 1.5 to 2.2 millions m3/year or round wood, and in other words, we found that the use of around 9 m3 of round wood, sustain 1 fulltime employee per year. The organisation of the production is typical of an industrial district, with a high level of intertwined relationships and sub-contracting between the production unites, a high specialisation of them, and a prevalence of the small and very small units in various steps of the production, compared to the bigger integrated units.

• Publisher: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis