RIYADH — The advanced manufacturing and AI-based technologies are no longer a luxury or a choice, but have become inevitable to ensure growth and profitability, said Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources Bandar Ibrahim Alkhorayef. Alkhorayef made these remarks during the second day of the second Global Artificial Intelligence (AI) Summit that's being held in Riyadh and organized by SDAIA. He said that the role of advanced manufacturing and AI in manufacturing and mining industries topic is extremely important and timely, because it is bringing a lot of value from productivity, and improving reliability, enhancing employees safety, and making the industry more sustainable. Today, Saudi Arabia has a strong industrial base made of more than 10,000 factories that are spread around the country in 40 different industrial cities, making up 11% of the country' GDP with an impressive growth rate of 10%. Alkhorayef stated that the launching of the Future Factories program aims to transform 4,000 factories to become automated and adopt advanced manufacturing technologies. "The first step of the program was to define the maturity measure and standardize the factory' transformation technology." The transformation requirements for industry sectors have changed, he said, clarifying that, in the past factories were able to realize the benefits from different technologies by simply working with vendors to set up and deploy new solutions in their own facilities. But today, many of these technologies need to be part of the more integrated ecosystem that links external partners and requires advanced digital infrastructure that is provided by connectivity, cyber security and cloud platforms and services. He confirmed that the role of the government have become more key in enabling the sector to deploy and adapt new technologies, and the governments today are expected to be more involved in enabling the adaptation of advanced technologies through different means Alkhorayef focused on 4 important areas that he believes are essential for governments to do, which are: providing the digital infrastructures and applications, as it would make companies can seamlessly almost plug-and-play their industrial technologies and solutions. The second of which is attracting investments from technology providers and incentivizing the growth of the technology ecosystem. He added it is also important to ensure having a platform that develops human capital needed for the ecosystem to perform in the best way possible. Alkhorayef said the fourth one is that the governments need to be sure to introduce the right policies, regulation and enable execution. He added, "As an example of executing the role of the government, Saudi Arabia is taken this very seriously in different fonts, from our strategy to our industrial cities, to the way we do business in the ministry and to how spread in the private sector as a whole". AI and advanced technologies are main pillars in Saudi Arabia's industrial development strategy, as it is also upgrading its industrial cities to be smart and able to plug in with different solutions. "We are introducing AI solutions within the ministry itself to provide insight and support decision making policy enhancements," Alkhorayef confirmed. "Developing the technology ecosystem will require partnerships with strong technology and service providers who can develop smart industrial infrastructures and enable transformation of factories for the future." During the summit Alkhorayef announced the establishment of the world's second SIRI Assessor Training Center in Riyadh, where it plans to train 100 SIRI Assessors in the first year. He invited all technology companies, consulting firms and service providers to join these efforts to cultivate advanced technologies in the Saudi industrial sectors and in the Kingdom's industrial cities and its mining sector.
