Technology

How Metaverse is re-imagining manufacturing processes

Welcome back! With the first two blogs, we got a taste of what Metaverse means and the kind of impact it can have on our lives. Now, we shall turn our attention toward assessing its future implications for manufacturing. Let’s begin.

The overlap of Metaverse and manufacturing

Metaverse as a medium is still in its infancy, and its true potential remains untapped. For now, Metaverse remains quite popular in gaming circles and is being used regularly for virtual concerts, gigs, conferences, and social networking. However, the real big-picture use-cases, such as in the manufacturing sector, are still to gain wider business currency. However, slowly and steadily, skepticism for Industrial Metaverse is giving way to eager acceptance and large-scale application.

Consider, for instance, that in January this year, Hyundai entered into a partnership with Unity, a 3D content platform creator, to help it design and build a meta-factory that mirrors a real factory from scratch. Another car manufacturing giant BMW has employed the technologies underpinning the Metaverse to create a virtual replica of its Regensburg manufacturing plant. The virtual plant is helping re-imagine and streamline existing processes while culling out inefficiencies in the production chain. In another case, the world’s largest brewer AB InBev has created a digital simulation of its breweries and supply chains. These simulations have also been populated with digital people to assess how real-life humans respond to new workflow patterns.

Possible use-cases in the manufacturing domain

Many still mock the idea of Metaverse being relevant in the manufacturing world, but then Metaverse’s numerous use-cases are putting up a tough fight in response to their cynicism. Manufacturing is changing by the day with Metaverse technologies. A few of the use-cases are as follows:

  • Etching a virtual blueprint of the production plant, machinery, production process, and layout before laying the project’s foundation stone.
  • Creation of virtual humans to simulate natural human movements and engagement.
  • Playing out different scenarios on inventory management, upkeep, and maintenance protocols.
  • Granular designing of production processes beginning from raw material procurement, deployment, processing, and dispatching of the finished product.
  • Virtual assessment of proficiency and expertise of service providers.
  • Boosting sales by creating virtual environments lets customers pick add-ons and accessories suited to their needs.
  • Running multiple simulations that help determine economic and efficient innovation and productivity solutions.

The many advantages that lie ahead

  • Collaborative brainstorming on product development 

 With Metaverse, conventional feedback patterns of back and forth and trial and error will soon become redundant. Since Metaverse allows for real-time collaboration and brainstorming, business stakeholders will be able to work simultaneously with designers, architects and industry specialists in molding production pipelines that are cost-effective, intuitive and meet the existing norms without a lot of rejigging.

  • Better product quality

A consequence of real-time feedback and collaboration is that manufacturers will be able to devise production chains that dramatically cut down on the potential margin of error, leading to a progressively smaller and smaller number of defective products.

  • A win-win for manufacturers and the customers

With a Metaverse-powered manufacturing unit, customers will have better insights into the production period for any given product, the raw materials used and the processes employed. This provides the customer with greater liberty in choosing the products that perfectly meet their requirements. With greater customer participation, manufacturers will extract deeper actionable insights into what does and does not work for their customers, the most demanded customizations, and segments that register maximum sales and those that do not. Access to better data will aid the manufacturer in eliminating products and processes that are relatively less cost-effective.

The way ahead

Until now, Metaverse technologies have been fruitfully utilized by companies that are either fanatically dedicated to innovation or those at the very fringe. Real broad-based, mass-market applications are still a distant dream, but not for long. Considering the ground-breaking utility and stellar return emerging from these technologies, it is only a matter of time before smaller, go-by-the-book companies will want to put meta capabilities to work in their manufacturing chains.

We, at Rucha Yantra, shall keep you updated with the latest updates of Metaverse. Stay tuned to our Knowledge Corner as we delve into the overlap of Metaverse and Robotics next.

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