While the Metaverse is most closely associated with enhanced shopping and entertainment experiences for consumers, industries are more concerned about using technology to improve collaboration, optimize and enhance operations, and develop manufacturing talent. We have a practical design.

The industrial metaverse is built using existing tools such as digital twins, artificial intelligence, high-fidelity simulations, augmented reality, blockchain, 5G connectivity, cloud and edge computing. According to Siemens USA CEO Barbara Hampton, this will help build a more resilient supply chain and localize manufacturing.

“In a digital environment, we can build something before it exists, experiment with it, harness the forces of nature virtually, and then we can actually create what we want to build in the real world. can decide,” Hampton said in his speech. Recent events hosted by MIT Technology Review.

Hampton and other experts explore how the industrial metaverse connects the physical and digital worlds, creating an immersive environment where manufacturing workers can collaborate in real time while making real-world business problems easier. And we discussed whether it can be solved at low cost.

The industrial metaverse begins to move

of digital twin, virtual models of real-world objects are the basis of the industrial metaverse. Next-generation digital twins will be photorealistic, physics-based, and AI-enabled, linked to the larger metaverse ecosystem, with expanded capabilities and further blurring the lines between physical and digital spaces. white paper On the Industrial Metaverse by MIT Technology Review and Siemens. Gartner We expect the digital twin market to surge to $183 billion by 2031, ABI Research predicts the market potential of the industrial metaverse to reach $100 billion in 2030.

Expectations for the industrial metaverse are growing for a variety of reasons. Faster problem resolution is a key advantage, as is the potential for recombinant innovation, especially with digital twin representations of physical assets to build costly prototypes and disrupt factory floor operations. because it makes it much easier to iterate without

“If a system of components and subcomponents is a digital twin, you can recombine them in new ways,” he said. marshall van alstein, Boston University Professor and Visiting Scholar of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy. “It creates a sandbox or playground where you can build and build new things.”

Potential use cases for the industrial metaverse include:

Improved design and engineering. Team members from different departments and locations can collaborate and innovate without the need for costly and time-consuming travel or extensive physical prototyping. The ability to combine photorealistic environments with various simulations enables greater testing and validation of product designs and plant equipment in the virtual world, facilitating greater innovation.

Virtual commissioning and plant design. With an immersive digital twin, manufacturers can build and commission manufacturing floors within the metaverse to ensure optimized operations and resilience. Errors can be detected and corrected without interrupting ongoing production or incurring unnecessary investment risks. Siemens uses digital twin technology to plan and simulate the construction of his 73,000-square-meter factory in Nanjing, China, leveraging factory data, production line data, performance data and building information to ensure construction begins It was factory tested and verified long before it was released.

Enhanced operations. Through simulation and real-time data collection, manufacturers gain insights used to optimize equipment, minimize downtime, and predict and prevent failures.

employee skill ups. The Metaverse gives employees remote access to specialized skills and virtual training regardless of their physical location. Employees can receive in-depth, hands-on training on complex machines in virtual worlds without disrupting operations.

Implementing the industrial metaverse

As manufacturers delve deeper into the metaverse, they should keep the following in mind:

Interoperability and an open ecosystem are the keys to success. To benefit users, the metaverse needs an open ecosystem with interoperability so that data can flow between applications. Digital twins support this because they represent end-to-end systems rather than individual assets or silos. “The trick is to make everything work together,” said Douglas Bellin, global lead for business development, Industry 4.0 and Smart His Factory at Amazon Web His Services.

Multiphysics simulation plays a central role. Siemens Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Technology Officer Peter Corte said multiphysics simulation, which allows the behavior of physical assets to be mimicked in the digital world, will be a key differentiator in the industrial metaverse. . “We’re trying to solve real-world problems in the industrial metaverse, which means everything has to behave exactly like it does in the real world,” he said.

Think globally, not locally. Manufacturers should consider not only improving efficiency by installing sensors in a single machine, but also ensuring that the machine operates at peak efficiency. Instead, you should consider a system-level view and experiment with how your changes affect end-to-end optimization. “By getting data across all these different systems, we can optimize globally, perhaps replacing a set of components entirely or doing things differently to achieve something very efficient. You can do something like that,” says Van Alstyne.

Create more value than you receive. Growth potential through recombination depends on ecosystem partners sharing data and models. It is important to establish new governance models and rewards that encourage participation in the metaverse. “The idea here is that you need ideas from strangers that you don’t have, and if you don’t reward them, it won’t happen,” Van Alstin said. “People will be willing to give you resources if you can create more value than you receive. If you don’t, they won’t.”

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