Mechanization Taro Chips Processing At Small Micro Medium Enterprise In Tambakan Village, Blitar District

. The community service program to assist the Small Micro Medium Enterprise in Tambakan Village, Blitar Regency East Java, has been done. The program's purpose was to improve the productivity of Taro chips as the prime product of Berkah Mulya Small Micro Medium Enterprise by introducing the appropriate technology to the taro chips making process. Currently, taro chips are produced manually. People did all the steps from cutting, frying, oil separating, and packaging by hand. It was time-consuming. The products sometimes were not uniform in thickness beside the oil content was relatively high, so the product was easy to be rancid. We introduced the cutting machine and the spinner to improve Taro Chips production's quality and quantity in this program. The methods used in this program started with a field survey, observation, socialization, the introduction of the appropriate technology (cutting and spinner machine), workshop and training, and evaluation. By applying the technology, the productivity increased from 5 kg/ day become 25 kg/day. The product's quality also becomes uniform in thickness, and the expiration date becomes longer.

Berkah Mulya Small Micro Medium Enterprise (UMKM) produced taro chips in small capacity because they and just by people's order. They made the taro chips manually without using any machine. They sold the taro chips only to people around the home and put the product in a small store nearby their home. The productivity was still low and became decreased because of the pandemic. Pandemic covid 19 during 2020-2021 significantly impacted Indonesia's Small Micro Medium Enterprise (UMKM). The sector that was much influenced by the pandemic was food and beverage. The Republic of Indonesia's Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs said that the covid-19 pandemic affected 1.785 cooperatives and Small Micro Medium Enterprise (UMKM) [5].Through the community service program, the University of Pembangunan Nasional Veteran Jawa Timur (UPN "Veteran" Jatim) helped the Small Micro Medium Enterprise (UMKM) to rise and grow up. The community service program was implemented in Tambakan village, Gandusari subdistrict, Blitar district, East Java province. Our partner is a group of local people who run a small business called "Berkah Mulya" Small Micro Medium Enterprise (UMKM). Although UMKM Berkah Mulya produces several products, we focused on Taro Chips in this community service. From the field survey and observation, we identify problems that keep their business stagnant even though they have already run their enterprise for more than five years. The problems are: [1] The UMKM Berkah Mulya produces only in a small capacity. It was because they did not have labour that worked for them. They run their small enterprise just with their own small family. [2] All production processes were done manually. It was time-consuming because many steps were done to make taro chips, from peeling the taro skin, cutting the taro tube into chips, frying, and packaging. [3] The product quality is not uniform in shape and still contains the oil because draining processes after frying has been done manually. It was also time-consuming. It needed several hours to make the oil in the chips drain well. We find the solution to improve the production process by mechanization from those problems. We provided the chopper machine to cut the Taro into slices and the spinner machine to drain the oil after frying. Those machines are simple but valuable. We believe it will increase their productivity.

II. METHODS
The method of this program consists of four steps. The first step was a field survey to gather accurate information from the partner. Direct observation of the Small Micro Medium Enterprise was done to analyze the actual situation and identify the problem regarding taro chips production. Beside observed the location, we also interviewed the enterpriser and local people. We found that many housewives in Tambakan village produce taro chips on a small scale. Most of them only produce the taro chip on Islamic Holy day (Idul Fitri). From the direct observation to their production place, we found the production area l was not clean enough. All production process was manual using simple devices. The taro chips making process are shown in Figures 4 and 5. Figure 4 shows the taro chopping process using a simple slicer, and figure 5 shows the taro chips frying process. The last step was to evaluate the effectiveness of the program. The investigation in this program is limited to the appropriate technology for the production process. We compare the quality and the quantity of production before and after the mechanization.

III. RESULT AND DISCUSSION
The socialization process was a crucial step. During socialization, we educate the enterpriser on how to improve their business. Legalization is needed when they want to expand their business. One legal document that they should have is P-IRT (legal document for the home industry). Our previous community service report has published the consulting process regarding the legalization document proposal [6].Since their product is food, education regarding good food production is needed. The food production standards have been released by the National Agency of Drug and Food Control (BPOM). Indonesian government regulate the Good Manufacturing Practice, "Cara Produksi Pangan yang Baik Untuk Industri Rumah Tangga (CPPB-IRT)" related with food savety [7]. The regulation is purposed to protect the consumer from getting inappropriate food.The other solution was applying the simple appropriate technology for taro chip production. There are two machines to be involved, i.e., chopper and slicer machine and spinner machine. The chopper and slicer machine was made at Jaya Steel manufacture Surabaya. It is used to slice the taro tube become slice. Therefore, it can reduce the production time. With the manual process, the slicing process took 1 hour for only 3 kg taro, while the chopper machine can slice 30 kg/hour. Moreover, the thickness of the taro slice can be set depending on the need. The machine power is only 125 watts, suitable for the home industry. The chopper machine visualization is shown in figure 6, while the detail specification is shown in table 1. One of the most important steps in taro chip manufacturing is frying. The frying process needs a lot of oil, so the chips become crunchy. One problem after frying is the oil draining process. The manual draining process still traps some oil on the chips pore. Our solution to this problem is by introducing the spinner machine. The machine uses centrifugal force to release the oil from the products. The image of the spinner machine and its specification are represented in figure 6 and table 3, respectively. The spinning result shows that the spinner machine can drain the oil very well. In 3 minutes, run the spinner. About 10 ml of oil can be drained from 2 kg of taro chips. The machine is also very energy-saving and suitable for small home industries or Small Micro Medium enterprises. Usually, they need around 3 hours to drain the oil, so it saves enough to be packed, but now they do not need to wait long to drain the oil. Moreover, with the spinner machine for oil draining, the product quality is better because it is more crunchy and long-lasting.Another concern of our program was the production place. As we noticed in our introduction, the kitchen where they produce the taro chips was not clean enough. So we suggest them to improve the area for production to be clean. Finally, the Berkah Mulya enterpriser changed the floor from cement become ceramic. As shown in figure 8, the production area becomes more clean and the location is not too close with the toilete .   Fig 8. production area after community service program The last step in our community service program is evaluating and assisting. We assess the improvement of the "Berkah Mulya" Small Micro Medium Enterprise before and after the program. We also helped them with using the machine and how to maintain it. After about seven months of the community service program, there are increasing the productivity of their taro chips. They increase the production from about 10 kg/week become 30 kg/week. The mechanization by using appropriate technology can also increase their productivity and income.

IV. CONCLUSION
Our community service program concludes that: 1. the people's knowledge about the good production process increases. People have become more aware of the safety of food production. The people's skills in operating the machine improve.
2. People can operate very well the chopper and spinner machine.
3. The productivity of Berkah Mulya Small Micro Medium Enterprise increased, and the product quality became better.

V. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This program has been funded by the research and service community centre (LPPM), University of Pembangunan Nasional Veteran Jawa Timur, in the year 2021 by PIKAT program.