“The industrial metaverse combines physical-digital fusion and human augmentation for industrial applications and contains digital representations of physical industrial environments, systems, assets and spaces that people can control, communicate, and interact with.” Thierry Klein, President Bell Labs

The word “metaverse” creates a thousand images and perhaps even more questions in our minds. Everyone is talking about this ubiquitous and unprecedented convergence of the virtual, real, and digital landscapes. While applications of VR, AR, and MR have existed for a while, it is the immersive nature of the metaverse and its ability to cause meaningful actions in the real world through actions taken in the virtual domain, and vice versa, that make it so interesting.

How do frontline-workforce digitization and integration with the overall digital infrastructure help manufacturers get more value from their transformation?  

One of the things that each and every manufacturer, whether a single-plant production setup or a global network, has realized by the end of 2022, is that digital transformation can deliver immense value if done right. Companies that complete this transformative exercise become more competitive and experience massive internal efficiency gains across their value chains. They are saving more, producing more, and inventing faster than their peers, and the value they generate will only be amplified as their transformations mature and become more ubiquitous across their worldwide manufacturing locations.

As soon as we hear the words “artificial intelligence,” we picture robots and machines taking over like in Terminator or a hallucinogenic super-software controlling our world like in The Matrix. However, the current truth is far from the fictional accounts. AI is already all-pervasive and influencing our decisions and destinies, whether while shopping online or while deciding what meal to order from an app. AI is certainly here to stay and will forever change the way the world works. Manufacturing will particularly see the immense impact of machine learning, process automation, and robotics.