Success Story
AI Center of Excellence at MODON (Sadeed)
MODON
Established in 2001, the Saudi Authority for Industrial Cities and Technology Zones (MODON) serves as the governmental cornerstone for developing, operating, and regulating the Kingdom’s industrial and technology sectors. Currently managing 36 industrial cities and empowering over 4,000 factories, MODON acts as a pivotal catalyst for the National Industrial Strategy (NIS) under Vision 2030. The organization is spearheading the transition of its existing factories toward Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR 4.0) standards, while functioning as the primary engine to aggressively multiply the Kingdom’s industrial footprint to 36,000 facilities by the year 2035
MODON
Established in 2001, the Saudi Authority for Industrial Cities and Technology Zones (MODON) serves as the governmental cornerstone for developing, operating, and regulating the Kingdom’s industrial and technology sectors. Currently managing 36 industrial cities and empowering over 4,000 factories, MODON acts as a pivotal catalyst for the National Industrial Strategy (NIS) under Vision 2030. The organization is spearheading the transition of its existing factories toward Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR 4.0) standards, while functioning as the primary engine to aggressively multiply the Kingdom’s industrial footprint to 36,000 facilities by the year 2035
The Strategic Context
Saudi Arabia recognized the transformative power of artificial intelligence early on, establishing the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) in 2019. This strategic foresight has positioned the Kingdom as the regional leader in the Middle East – achieving an AI index score of 71.57 – and 15th globally. Mirroring this trajectory, the Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources (MIM) has proactively championed the integration of Artificial Intelligence throughout the industrial ecosystem since 2023.
The Need
The Challenge
1. Selecting the Right Partner: The AI market is currently inundated with theoretical promises that lack proven enterprise execution. MODON needed a deeply experienced partner capable of bypassing the hype to deliver measurable, operational business value rather than mere experimentation.
2. Where to Start From: The vast array of possible AI applications posed a real risk of scattered, low-impact pilot programs. MODON required a unified strategy that balanced the transformative potential of Gen AI with its operational risks. The goal was to secure immediate, high-impact victories while concurrently building the structural foundation – spanning data, infrastructure, and human capital – needed for sustainable, long-term AI growth.
Objectives and Direction
→ Setting the Direction – Two Imperatives:
♦ Strategy: MODON’s executive leadership tasked the joint Takween-MODON team with ensuring every initiative was intrinsically linked to MODON’s operational targets and the National Industrial Strategy. Theoretical concepts were strictly translated into practical projects that deliver undeniable impact.
♦ Governance: The project enforces uncompromising adherence to the SDAIA Generative AI Guidelines for Government (2024), as well as mandates from the Digital Government Authority (DGA) and the National Cybersecurity Authority (NCA). Furthermore, the entire lifecycle of Gen AI tool development and utilization is governed by the ISO/IEC 42001 international standard for Artificial Intelligence Management Systems (AIMS), ensuring strict tool-specific policies and clear professional accountabilities.
The Execution
→ Dual-Filter Approach: To distill hundreds of proposed use cases, the team utilized a strict Dual-Filter methodology:
♦ Real Business Value: Prioritizing initiatives that directly resolved major operational bottlenecks within core business workflows.
♦ Data Readiness: Acknowledging that data quality dictates AI success, Takween’s data engineering teams conducted intensive data cleansing and preparation. This provided the pristine foundation necessary for data scientists to successfully build and train robust AI models.
→ Integration: The technological backbone of this strategy is the Moheet AI Suite, which was deployed exclusively on MODON’s private infrastructure to guarantee absolute (100%) data residency. Through the Moheet Knowledge module, an “Institutional Memory Graph” was constructed, empowering AI agents with a flawless contextual understanding of MODON’s operational history.
Outcomes (Impact)
→ Employee Productivity – Knowledge Management: Previously, navigating siloed institutional data required hours of manual effort. The deployment of a centralized intelligent search engine has eliminated these barriers, delivering a 95% acceleration in information retrieval.
→ The Investor Journey: Complex, manual onboarding procedures that once delayed business operations have been overhauled into streamlined, AI-assisted workflows, yielding a 50% faster investor approval cycle.
Eight months into the two-year timeline, the essential structural capabilities of the AI Center of Excellence are fully operational. MODON is already experiencing the transformative benefits of targeted AI implementation across its priority domains. Moving forward, the Takween-ASAS consortium and MODON’s internal teams continue to aggressively scale these capabilities, remaining firmly on track to achieve the ultimate AI maturity goals envisioned by the Authority’s leadership.
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