LiveWorx 23: How the Industrial Metaverse Will Impact Manufacturing
LiveWorx 2023 focused on product lifecycle innovation and how it can help manufacturers win. While manufacturers can ensure success by refining and fully committing to current digital transformation initiatives, they should also have an eye on what comes next. For us, the idea of a fully realized digital thread marks the paramount of digital transformation potential: This closed loop of data that informs and enhances products and services at every stage brings such a multitude of benefits that it cannot be overstated. Yet achieving this complete data capture is not easy, especially as products enter the field. One such way to better capture and realize a complete digital thread? Deploy an industrial metaverse platform.
What is PTC’s industrial metaverse?
Much has been made in the past couple years of the metaverse but, rest assured, PTC’s industrial metaverse concept is far more practical than its social media counterpart. PTC sees the industrial metaverse as a converged experience that blends elements of the physical and the digital worlds together. To quote PTC CEO Jim Heppelmann from his Path to the Future: Products in the Age of Transformation LiveWorx keynote, “there is a tremendous need to lubricate how knowledge workers on the digital side collaborate with frontline workers out in the physical world in factories and on service calls. Usually, this takes time, and it might involve airplane tickets and rental cars, but that changes when you apply [our] metaverse concept.”
PTC’s industrial metaverse concept envisions real-time connectivity, collaboration, and–and this is the crucial component–spatially aware context between knowledge employees or frontline workers that may be hundreds of miles apart. In other words, we want the remote expert to not only be able to see the hardware they’re being asked to comment on, but also understand its environment. It’s one thing to know that equipment keeps shorting out, it’s another to understand that there is a leaky pipe less than two feet away from where the equipment is operating. Industrial metaverse provides this context, all while enabling real-time communication and collaboration between multiple individuals.
Industry experts discuss industrial metaverse use cases
In addition to the keynote – and having a comprehensive presence on the Xtropolis showroom floor with demonstrations–multiple industry leaders met for an in-depth conversation surrounding the early stages of industrial metaverse and why and how the potential was already proving itself.
Led in discussion by Product Executive Shiva Kashalkar; Helmut Draxler, CDIO at Burckhardt Compression Group, Paul Miller, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, and Steve Dertien, CTO at PTC, all outlined why they see the value in the industrial metaverse concept.
For Draxler, whose organization is a global leader in industrial compression systems, the industrial metaverse was as practical as responding to reality. In particular, the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly shifted their service workflow. No longer could they send their in-house experts out to service their products. Instead, they had to rely on clients’ or other third-party technicians to perform the repairs/maintenance. This created a substantial knowledge gap, one that threatened the operational efficiency and longevity of their products.
Even with data coming in from valuable sources, like digital twins, Burckhardt Compression experts needed more information to guarantee a fast and effective response. As such, conversation started with PTC to pilot and test this industrial metaverse initiative, bringing spatial context to existing remote expert solutions and services.
To quote Draxler directly: “After COVID, we shifted our focus toward the customers’ engineers and having them perform the job on our behalf. And that brought us to the idea of virtualization. We invested quite early in exploring metaverse technology for this application. With this technology, we quickly learned that we could speed up our reaction time, facilitate knowledge transfer between engineers, and nearly eliminate travel costs.”
Watch this video to see how Burckhardt is using PTC industrial metaverse technology:
Providing Forrester’s perspective, Miller stated that they believed industrial metaverse to be about more than context. Used properly, it allows users to actually see the invisible – capturing spatial elements like temperature and humidity shifts far quicker than the naked eye can observe. Only through understanding physical space, Miller noted, could true collaboration over distance be perfected.
Finally, Dertien provided PTC’s pragmatic approach, noting that, while 60 seconds doesn’t sound like a long time, it can be really costly for a manufacturer. Downtime plagues bottom line revenue, so any technology that reduces maintenance time while preserving a strong first-time-fix-it rate is valuable.
A realistic metaverse
The message from LiveWorx 2023 on the industrial metaverse was, all bias aside, a refreshing one. We’re not talking about a radical overhaul of manufacturing as we know it (at least not in the short term) but rather the next significant step toward closing out data gaps in the digital thread, all while strengthening remote collaboration capabilities even further.
We urge organizations thinking about the industrial metaverse to take careful stock before investing. Start with a problem that actually needs solving, rather than technology adoption for adoption’s sake. This technology is still new and we’re actively working to see how it best integrates into the current PTC product portfolio. That said, don’t mistake its novelty for a lack of refinement. Our concept isn’t just looking to help clients in 30 years, it’s looking to assist now. As we work to close the digital thread and create a constant data feedback loop, the industrial metaverse concept is viewed as a core component toward reaching this vision.