Students from the Electrical Engineering Department at Diponegoro University have once again achieved a proud accomplishment at the national level. The REPLICA (REsearch PLC In Control Automation) team won first place in the 2025 Maestro Fest Competition in the PLC category, a prestigious national competition organized by Astra Polytechnic. This success serves as tangible proof of the quality and competitiveness of UNDIP Electrical Engineering students in the fields of industrial automation and control technology.
The Maestro Fest Competition 2025 is a competition focused on mastering Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), a key technology in modern industrial automation systems. The competition was held as a form of contribution in preparing a creative and innovative young generation who are ready to face the increasingly complex challenges of Industry 4.0. The final round of the competition was held at the Astra Polytechnic Campus, Cikarang, West Java, and was attended by 107 teams from various universities throughout Indonesia.
The UNDIP Electrical Engineering Department team that made it to the finals and won first place consisted of Yazid Sirril Wafa and Bryan Nathanael Saragih. This competition was the second event they participated in after previously taking part in the Electronics and Robotics Innovation Competition (ERIC) held by the State University of Jakarta, providing them with valuable experience in facing national-level competitions.
In the competition, participants were given an assembly machine and a robot arm to be programmed using PLC and robot software. The UNDIP team was challenged to build an automatic line production system consisting of a Stack Magazine Station, Pick and Place, Swivel Arm, and Rotary Gripper. This system was designed to automatically assemble workpieces into complete parts. In addition, the system is equipped with an automatic product quality checking feature, which can determine whether the assembly results are OK or NG. After going through the assembly and inspection processes, the parts are then transferred to the next station using a robot arm. This work was considered superior because it has an efficient production flow, is well integrated, and has great potential to be directly applied to industrial manufacturing assembly lines.
The team also said that the machine and robot system they programmed could be further developed for implementation in the industrial world, especially in the parts assembly and automation-based manufacturing sectors. This shows that their work is not only competitively superior but also has high practical value.
For this achievement, the two students expressed their gratitude and happiness. They admitted that they were very happy and did not expect to win 1st place out of a total of 107 competing teams. They are also grateful for being given the opportunity to compete with the best participants from all over Indonesia, which has been a valuable experience in their academic journey and personal development.
This success was certainly not possible without the support of various parties. The REPLICA UNDIP team would like to thank the UNDIP Faculty of Engineering, the UNDIP Department of Electrical Engineering, Enda Wista Sinuraya, S.T., M.T. as their advisor, Astra Polytechnic as the organizer, and all their colleagues on the REPLICA team who gave their full support during the preparation process and the competition itself.
This achievement is expected to further motivate Electrical Engineering students at the University of Diponegoro to continue developing their competencies, innovating, and actively participating in competitive events at the national and international levels, while also making a tangible contribution to the development of industrial automation technology in the future.