| NOTAS: | "“What am I? The data? The process that generates it? The relationships between the numbers?” - Greg Egan, science fiction author, Permutation City. In business and popular media, the Metaverse hype wave is already entering its disillusionment phase, superseded by artificial intelligence (AI). Yet the Industrial Metaverse, perhaps less exciting in the popular imagination, has never really been part of the hype. Is this where the real value of the Metaverse will be realized? There are differing views about what the Industrial Metaverse is versus the Metaverse as a whole, and how it differs from existing digital twin technologies normally considered under Industry 4.0. In this Report, we provide an evidence-based perspective, assessing current technology status, summarizing use cases and market potential, and offering recommendations for companies going forward. We conclude that the Industrial Metaverse is best defined as a “connected whole-system digital twin with functionalities to interact with the real system in its environment, allowing decision makers to better understand the past and forecast the future.” As such, the Industrial Metaverse is a further evolution of discrete digital twin technologies that already exist today (e.g., for factories or plants) but progressively extended to ultimately represent an end-to-end, real-world industrial system, including external elements outside the company and the environment within which it operates. The Industrial Metaverse thus provides a transformative tool to elevate the use of digital simulation technology to the level of strategic decision-making. This is important for dealing with the increasing complexity and accelerated pace of development company leaders face and is especially valuable for developing effective sustainable growth strategies." |
