Rather than relying on digital platforms or AI-optimized logistics, the distribution systems for these factories' products are heavily relationship-based:
Sales and order-taking are handled by mobile salespersons (sales keliling), family members, or long-term subcontractors.
Product delivery often depends on trusted drivers (sopir langganan) who navigate city routes based on routine, not optimization algorithms.
Marketing relies on repeat orders and word-of-mouth networks, not on SEO, advertising, or digital storefronts.
This system forms a closed economic circuit---efficient in its own way, but invisible to Layers 3 and 4, which operate on data traceability and transaction formalization.
C. Structural Visibility Gap in the AI and Fintech Ecosystem
Despite their importance in real-world supply chains, these small factories are not legible to AI systems, QRIS infrastructures, or digital financial assessments. Their:
Cash-based income is not captured in credit scoring algorithms.
No online presence means they cannot be indexed, recommended, or ranked in marketplace algorithms.
Lack of transaction data makes them inaccessible for fintech products like invoice financing, digital insurance, or adaptive logistics.
This results in a form of "economic invisibility", where vital production units exist materially but not computationally, thus falling outside both digital value chains and policymaking radar.
D. Implications for Layered Economic Modeling
These empirical insights confirm the fragmentation and disconnection that characterize the 4-layer asymmetric economy. Tangerang exemplifies how:
An entire layer of productive actors can remain disconnected from digital infrastructure---not due to lack of potential, but due to mismatched incentives, path dependencies, and ecosystem design.
"Going digital" is not a universal or inevitable transition, but a process mediated by context-specific constraints such as trust networks, supply regularity, and transaction culture.
Economic modeling must therefore incorporate "unseen actors" who operate effectively yet are excluded from digital transformation metrics.
In sum, Tangerang is not an anomaly but a representative node in the Indonesian economic structure. Understanding its micro-level logic is essential for designing layered, inclusive, and non-linear economic development strategies.
1. Introduction
A. The Context of Indonesia's Stratified Economic Landscape
Indonesia's economy presents a nonlinear and stratified structure that resists simplistic categorization into binary frameworks such as formal vs. informal or urban vs. rural. Instead, the Indonesian economic landscape is best understood as a multi-layered asymmetric system, shaped by historical dualities, technological heterogeneity, institutional gaps, and cultural path dependencies. This complexity is both structural and dynamic, yielding economic strata that coexist, compete, and occasionally cooperate---yet often without integration or mutual legibility.
