Four Ways the Industrial Metaverse Can Drive Sustainability

The metaverse is one of the latest buzzwords in the technology space. But beyond the hype, there are practical areas where the metaverse can make an impact in the manufacturing world and contribute towards environmental sustainability.

So, what exactly is the metaverse? At IDC, we define the metaverse as an immersive future environment that blends the physical and digital to drive a shared sense of presence, interaction, and continuity across the multiple spheres of work and life.

The metaverse isn't about one specific technology — it's a new way of employing and interconnecting multiple technologies to completely alter the business landscape.

As the metaverse evolves, we will look at what we call the "industrial metaverse", which takes the concept of the metaverse beyond being purely digital into an environment that is closely connected to the real world. In some ways, the industrial metaverse is just an expansion of the digital twin. As some people in the industry put it, it's digital twins on steroids.

While digital twins visualize data flows and provide collaboration across engineering, operations, supply chains and servicing, the industrial metaverse goes further to provide photorealistic visualisation underlined by artificial intelligence (AI), cloud and IoT to enable "virtual time travel" and bring the entire life cycle into one world.

With manufacturing organizations committed to making sustainability central to their businesses, the industrial metaverse can reshape how "being green" becomes part of the organisation's DNA. Manufacturers should begin the process of exploring and investing early on to reap the full benefits — or risk playing catch-up with their competitors in the years to come.

READ: The Rise of ESG and What it Means for Your Leadership Approach

Imagining the Industrial Metaverse

The full potential and impact of the industrial metaverse will be seen in the longer term, and it will drive massive change. This will radically transform the way manufacturers hire and train people, drive collaboration, design and build new products, test and improve business and operational processes, manage factories and assets, and sell to and service customers.

Think of a world map — it has countries, oceans, and continents in varying shapes and sizes. Now imagine a similar virtual world with multiple factories, suppliers, logistics service providers, customers, and regulatory bodies coming together to form an industrial metaverse. Each of the components has its own real-time data being generated and shared to create new business values.

Now, imagine being a manufacturer in this industrial metaverse looking for suppliers that meet a defined set of green credentials. Instead of physically visiting and inspecting the supplier's location, you can make a virtual visit to make your decision. Everything you need is transparently available in the industrial metaverse for you to enter right from the comfort of your work desk. No need to travel miles (saving CO2 emissions) and no lag in the data flow, leading to quicker and more reliable decision-making. Imagine it — being able to track a product from its origin and enhance the sustainability credentials of your organization.

READ: The 4 Pathways to Industrial Decarbonization 

Metaverse and Sustainability Use Cases Intertwined

While the possibilities are endless, here are four concrete areas where being part of the industrial metaverse can positively impact a manufacturer's environmental footprint:

#1: Product design and development

The sustainability of solutions and processes can be tested in a virtual environment, including layout planning and simulation and the training of AI models. With digital products and services gaining a larger share in the future, dematerialization and function bundling can not only lead to material savings but also remove the need for transportation.

For instance, you can imagine a digital twin of the product, realistic by design and by physical behaviour. Such a digital twin, represented by converged virtual and physical systems, can appear in the fully virtual world — a metaverse. Just think of the hours of real-world testing that could be realised in the virtual environment — and how much energy, material and CO2 could be saved.

#2: Building virtual factories

Manufacturers can create a hyper-realistic comprehensive digital twin, to either simulate a factory before physically building one or to add a digital layer to their existing factories to create more value, perhaps without needing to build a new physical factory.

Manufacturers can, therefore, consider generating more value from their existing machines or assets by generating and sharing data across the ecosystem or by leveraging the ecosystem to create value not just from the factory but also from shared data in real-time. They can also engage in a variety of activities to minimise their emissions, such as testing their solutions in the virtual environment or maintaining their assets when the production officer, say, has a better understanding of how the machine works.

#3: Supplier relationship management

The metaverse can transform supplier relationship management. With thousands of suppliers distributed across the world, being part of the metaverse can provide an effective environment to implement, for instance, a supplier sustainability code of conduct and assess the environmental and social responsibility credentials of the supplier base. Having supply chain stakeholders in the metaverse also provides greater visibility across the value chain. The CO2 footprint therefore could be simulated based on the best scenario route planning — all in a fully virtual environment.

#4: Social sustainability

It doesn't really matter who you are, but what really matters is what you are capable of. The willingness to learn and the ability to adapt to constantly changing conditions are key when it comes to succeeding in a fully digital environment. With the metaverse in its initial stages, it can be built to be more inclusive, with manufacturers investing in and becoming an integral part of its development.

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From Isolated Planets to a Universe

The metaverse reduces the need to move people and things around in the physical world. Reducing physical movement can cut resource use and save energy. More business can be conducted digitally, as well, which also helps to reduce carbon emissions. There is also an inherent ability to track a product through the whole life cycle in the metaverse — something manufacturers can use to enhance sustainability.

For broader industrial metaverse use case adoption, the optimistic view is in the 7- to 10-year range; realistically, it could be more than 10 years. IDC predicts that at least 20% of Global 2000 manufacturers will include the industrial metaverse in their digital transformation road maps to address advanced simulation, cross-domain collaboration, and safety in the next three years, and it is expected to gain momentum thereafter.

We live at the edge of the "next big thing", which could become the new standard of how people and machines work and how industrial organizations interact with each other and the entire ecosystem. It's still about small and isolated digital worlds, but they are growing and interacting and one day they will just click together and create a real universe — the industrial metaverse.

Interested in learning more about this topic? 

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