Fatima Muhammad
Saudi Gazette
JEDDAH — The Kingdom imports an estimated amount of SR200 billion annually of spare parts and specialized materials, noted a speaker in a recent workshop on Localizing the Manufacturing Spare Parts held in Jeddah.
Hashim Al-Zain, director of engineering at Dartech, noted in his speech that the Kingdom cannot transit into a knowledge-based economy if it continues to import most of its spare parts from overseas and remain under the mercy of Original Equipment Manufacturers.
Al-Zain called on localizing the manufacturing of complicated and out-of-warrantee spare parts “to enable the transition into becoming a knowledge-based economy and reduce the amount of money spent overseas and spend it locally.”
Most utilities and, desalination and cement plants in the Kingdom are built in the 70s or 80s and as many of the plants are approaching the end of their usable design life. Up to 30% of all spare parts are out of warranty this forces companies to upgrade their entire system instead of replacing faulty parts, nonetheless if these companies request a spare part overseas that might take 6 to 12 months.
The event highlighted the importance of reversed engineering and the role it could play in localizing the industry of spare parts starting from the design stage to the complete production of a particular spare part locally.
For example, Al-Zain said some 50% of drinking water in the Kingdom comes from desalination with an increasing demand of water that hits 7% annually. The kingdom has 35 desalination plants in 16 cities. However, the desalination plants were mainly built in the 70s and therefore studies indicate that the size of the spare parts market for desalination industry exceeds SR50 billion annually.
According to him the Korean model of reversed engineering helped the country to move from imitation to innovation. Their five-year development plan in the country focused on promoting inward transfer of foreign technologies and on developing domestic knowledge to transfer technologies. This model, noted Al-Zain, will be followed in the Kingdom to enhance the spare part market and pave the way to complete production industry. In another category the stop of an assembly line at a factory of about an hour might result in a potential loss of SR1 billion.
Using reversed engineering in the Kingdom can speed getting the spare parts, reduce the costs to no less than 30% further and it can also provide various job opportunities for Saudi youth.
