KACST brings KSA’s economy into digital age

King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology in partnership with Siemens hosted on Sept. 27 a workshop titled “Optimizing the product value chain in the digital manufacturing age,” an event that kickstarts an ambitious program toward the implementation of “Industry 4.0” strategy in KSA. 
KACST was mandated by Council fo Development and Economic Affairs (CEDA) to implement a series of initiatives that help identify and use advanced technologies as part of the National Transformation Plan under Vision 2030. 
At the opening of the workshop, Prince Turki bin Saud Al-Saud, KACST president, said that KACST is sparing no effort to support local small- and medium-size companies to fully acquire capabilities that usually characterize big corporations.
With full support from NTP, KACST will develop support packages for SMEs, from company establishment through the BADIR program to complete product development and production support, said the Prince. 
For the latter, KACST has established an advanced manufacturing center with the support of leading manufacturing OEMs such as DMG-MORI and Stratasys. 
Moreover, KACST and Siemens PLM have jointly established a world-class PLM center for full product engineering services. The center will serve as a training base and as a facility to promote state-of-the-art engineering tools in the Kingdom. 
“Those concepts are gaining ground as an important integrated part of our daily industrial ecosystem. Put simply, they assist organizations to manage their daily design through to manufacturing challenges in the most effective way possible, leading to a sustainable path of innovative, long term growth and development,” Cor Visser, technical director Siemens PLM EMEA said. 
“Industry 4.0 creates a seamless synergy between virtual (digital) and physical worlds, where information transcends across traditional barriers, leading to the creation of ‘smart factories’ of the future,” said Visser.