Simulations in a metaverse environment could allow manufacturers to test thousands of potential scenarios for their ecosystems to explore different strategies.
No matter how skeptical one may be about the much-ballyhooed metaverse, there’s no question that the pieces are already in place. Digital twins are gaining momentum, augmented and virtual reality are providing ways to remotely perform tasks, the Internet of things is providing location intelligence, and many companies are experimenting with blockchain or distributed ledger technologies. As its now being pitched by companies such as Meta/Facebook, the metaverse is a highly consumer environment. But can manufacturing companies also benefit by plotting a place in the metaverse? Observers think that’s exactly what’s on the horizon.
It’s possible the various components of the metaverse could all come together into “industrial metaverse” that parallels the existence of an emerging metaverse, the industrial metaverse may take digital twins, for example, to a whole new level. “Simulations in a metaverse environment allow manufacturers to test thousands of potential scenarios for their ecosystems and choose the best strategies for their company,” according to a report in The Manufacturer. “By doing this, they not only have real-time insights into how their equipment is performing, but they can also predict the results of upscaling or downscaling situations even decades from now.”
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Such continuous simulations “allow them to answer not only ‘what-if’ questions about potential choices, but also identify ‘how-to’ plans for optimizing and automating their facilities,” the report adds. “Metaverse simulations also offer the possibility to maintain a continuous and effective visibility of the entire production line and its future.”
Production-level simulations are only the beginning of what could be a range of potential industrial-level applications. In a recent report in IndustryWeek, IDC analyst Jan Burian provides some compelling use cases the industrial metaverse will enable:
“Boosting brand awareness via virtual factory walks and interactive assemblies
“Virtual presentations of products and services
“Payments via blockchain technologies, cryptocurrencies, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs)
“Collaborative R&D for design, simulations, and testing of products and services
“Leveraging the voice of the digital customer to improve real-world customer experience”
“Layout, performance, and mutual interaction simulations of machines, plants, supply chains, and even whole ecosystems
“Leveraging digital humans for human behavior simulation
“Material, component, and service supplier assessment
“Asset management and maintenance simulations
“Virtual selection of service providers
“Selling virtual twin add-ons through marketplaces orchestrated by OEMs or digital technology vendors
“Sales and operations planning optimization, based on simulations of data captured in the metaverse environment
“Testing environments for sustainable solutions and processes”
There is already some impetus toward the industrial metaverse coming out of the tech sector. “Large companies like Amazon are already embracing the industrial-metaverse trend,” writes John Burton, CEO of UrsaLeo, in SmartIndustry. . “The ecommerce behemoth has taken their IoT product and 3D-rendering technology and combined them to offer the AWS IoT TwinMaker—a toolkit for combining AWS IoT data with 3D models derived from CAD.”
For a number of years, there already have been Industry 4.0 initiatives underway, “gathering data from equipment and environments for many years,” Burton adds. This could be merged with “the 3D world of gaming technology, augmented/virtual/mixed realities, and CAD. Combining the two leads to an immersive environment where IoT data can be accessed in new and innovative ways. Real-time positioning systems can add another layer to this mix and track a person’s position in real time, which is then rendered in the 3D world, complete with avatars and other defining information.”
Joe McKendrick is RTInsights Industry Editor and industry analyst focusing on artificial intelligence, digital, cloud and Big Data topics. His work also appears in Forbes an Harvard Business Review. Over the last three years, he served as co-chair for the AI Summit in New York, as well as on the organizing committee for IEEE's International Conferences on Edge Computing. (full bio). Follow him on Twitter @joemckendrick.
