NEWS n 5 $100bn plan aims to make Saudi Arabia a global leader in robotics and automation SAUDI ARABIA HAS EMBARKED on an ambitious programme to become a global leader in robotics and industrial automation. It has set up a company called Alat which has formed a strategic partnership with the Japanese investment group SoftBank to develop “groundbreaking” industrial robots and to create a nextgeneration industrial automation infrastructure with the aim of establishing 32,000 “leading edge” factories in the Kingdom by 2025. An investment budget of $100bn has been allocated to Alat (which is also promoting other high-tech activities). The robotics project is predicted to be contributing $1bn to Saudi GDP by 2025. The rst step in the programme is the creation of a joint venture between Alat and SoftBank to produce industrial robots for a wide range of industrial manufacturing and assembly processes “that will radically transform manufacturing”. The partners will invest up to $150m to establish an automated manufacturing and engineering hub in Riyadh that will serve local and global demand. The rst factory is due to open in December 2024. Riyadh-headquartered Alat has been established to create a global champion in electronics and advanced industrial segments. With an investment budget of $100bn, Alat will partner with global technology leaders to transform a variety of industries, and to establish world-class businesses in Saudi, powered by clean energy. “We want this to be the start of a gamechanger for manufacturing around the world,”says Alat CEO, Amit Midha. “Together with SoftBank Group, we see an immense market opportunity for robotics, both in the Kingdom, the Gulf, and globally. With this initial set-up, we predict a contribution of $1bn to Saudi Arabia GDP by 2025. Our ambition is to fundamentally transform industrial manufacturing by robots, manufactured in the Kingdom.” SoftBank’s chairman and CEO, Masayoshi Son, adds: “The combination of Saudi Arabia’s vision, economic growth and leading logistics location, coupled with abundant access to green energy and Alat’s mandate to manufacture sustainably, made this strategic partnership very compelling. Today’s announcement marks a historic milestone for how future manufacturing will take place.” The new JV will build industrial robots using intellectual property developed by SoftBank and its aliates. The robots will be able to perform tasks with minimal programming. They will be target industrial assembly and other manufacturing applications. The robot factory that the JV is setting up will use the latest technologies to manufacture “unprecedented” next-generation robots, capable of performing a wide variety of tasks. Saudi Arabia’s massive infrastructure investments will accelerate the adoption of Fourth Industrial Revolution applications in the Kingdom, enhancing its supply chains and logistics. By 2035, it expects to be running around 32,000 factories powered by clean energy and using leadingedge technologies. Alat, backed by Saudi’s PIF sovereign wealth fund, aims to create a sustainable manufacturing hub in Saudi Arabia focused on advanced industrials and electronics. It will target seven strategic areas: advanced industrials; semiconductors; smart health; smart appliances; smart devices; smart buildings; and nextgeneration infrastructure. It will create products both for Saudi and the rest of the world. Alat aims to help the country to achieve its Vision 2030 goals of industrial development, innovation, economic diversication and job creation. By 2030, Alat wants to create 39,000 direct jobs, as well as a sustainable manufacturing hub focused on advanced industrials and electronics that, it hopes, will be contributing $9.3bn of non-oil revenues to the Kingdom’s GDP by the end of this decade. Another of Alat’s goals is to achieve zero-carbon manufacturing, powered by renewables. It will take advantage of the fact that Saudi Arabia receives around 105 trillion kWh of solar energy every day – equivalent to 10 billion barrels of oil. Alat CEO Amit Midha has joined the company from Dell Technologies, where he was responsible for the computer company’s growth in Asia-Pacic and Japan. The industrial automation and robotics activities will fall under Alat’s next-generation infrastructure business, whose president, Dr Matthias Heilmann, was previously president of ABB’s installation products division. www.alat.com www.drivesncontrols.com March 2024 MANUFACTURERS IN EUROPE and North America experienced a 279% rise in Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) cyber-attacks last year, according to new analysis by the communications infrastructure provider, Zayo. These are targeted attacks, launched simultaneously from multiple sources, that overwhelm a victim’s Internet capabilities, cutting them off for extended periods. According to the report, the attacks knocked out manufacturer’s Internet capabilities for 68 minutes on average – much longer than in most other sectors. With the costs of such attacks averaging £4,700 per minute, a typical DDoS attack on a manufacturer costs almost £320,000. Zavo suggests that a combination of business and networking practices, including the use of multiple digital connections, make manufacturers especially vulnerable to DDoS attacks. One bit of good news from the report is that the number of DDoS attacks on manufacturers fell by 24.5% in the second half of 2023, compared to the first. The report can be downloaded from: https://www.zayo.com/resources/ truth-and-trends-of-ddos-attacks Manufacturers suffered a 279% rise in DDoS attacks in 2023 Alat CEO Amit Midha: a game-changer for manufacturing around the world
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