The role of the industrial metaverse
Combining AR and VR technology, with massive IoT datasets and AI creates the industrial metaverse. This is the next ‘next-gen’ technology that will likely see widespread usage on the factory floor. It has the potential to revolutionize the way companies operate, providing new opportunities for optimization, innovation, sustainability, and growth.
Visualizing the invisible
The industrial metaverse offers ground-breaking tools for functional plant design and optimization, allowing users to make immediate operational changes. By digitally replicating physical assets in real-time, manufacturers can swiftly react to and orchestrate operations, revolutionizing facility coordination, and ensuring a seamless manufacturing landscape.
Organizations can now simulate products, machines, and even entire factories in the metaverse. Newer technologies and computing power enable the metaverse to move beyond a ‘game like’ interface to virtual systems which accurately reflect real-world ones. Artificial intelligence, digital twins, sensors, and more coalesce to create simulations that mimic real-world actions and inform pro-active decision making.
One of the standout benefits of integrating the metaverse into manufacturing is the capacity for remote operations. By digitally mirroring physical assets in the metaverse, manufacturers can remotely monitor and adjust operations, without the need to be on-site. Put into practice, this could involve overseeing aircraft maintenance from thousands of miles away or adjusting a production line in real-time from a different continent – with full visibility over connected operations. These are the possibilities the industrial metaverse presents.
Fujitsu offers expertise and guidance on how to create a responsible and accurate virtual-physical production environment. Manufacturers can have greater visibility over all parts of their facilities, from who is working in a specific area of a plant to the arrival of new raw materials the next day. Everything across the supply chain that was once hidden from view can be made visible in the metaverse.
Supply chain security and sustainability
Supply chains are increasingly subject to change and disruption. Suppliers, partners, transportation – all links in an ecosystem are being impacted by global and rapid disruptions such as climate change, pandemics, and geopolitical instabilities. As the metaverse synthesizes multiple advanced technologies into a single platform, it is a tool for uncovering paths that seamlessly and successfully navigate through this complexity.
Just as the metaverse can increase productivity within the factory, it brings sustainability benefits to the supply chain as well. Advanced systems can collect data from raw material sourcing to finished goods recycling. This creates an entire supply chain’s worth of data to be considered. By gathering data generated in the digital world and making informed, structural changes to a supply chain’s digital twin, manufacturers can save resources and materials across the supply chain, end-to-end.
But gathering reliable, actionable data in systems beyond immediate control is challenging. Private blockchain is a reliable, recognized innovation for trusted supplier and partner data. The Fujitsu Track and Trust digital ledger solution is built to mirror business processes. It provides a trusted point of validation, transparency, traceability, and verifiability of items throughout their lifecycle. With this data, manufacturers can better control quality and supplier relationships, and they can make more informed planning and forecasting decisions.
