The Industrial Metaverse is set to significantly improve engineering and production. It’s no surprise that leaders in businesses of every size and industry are closely following its progress. And naturally, all eyes are on Siemens – the company with perhaps the greatest expertise and understanding of digital transformation in production. How are they themselves creating the Industrial Metaverse in their own factories? Velia Janetzky, the person in charge of implementing the Industrial Metaverse at the Siemens Electronics Factory Erlangen, has a candid conversation with Industry Stories.
So, Velia, first things first. The Industrial Metaverse. What is it?
Velia Janetzky: The Industrial Metaverse is an evolution of what we’re doing today at Siemens, combining the real and digital worlds.
We see the Industrial Metaverse as a digital world where people and technology come together in real-time to solve real-world problems. By using very precise mirrors of complex industrial systems, we can collaborate, test and optimize in the digital world first in order to bring the best ideas to life, fast.
The Industrial Metaverse is an evolution of what we’re doing today at Siemens, combining the real and digital worlds. Velia Janetzky, Project Lead Industrial Metaverse at the Electronics Factory Erlangen
Which technologies are needed to build the Industrial Metaverse?
Many core technologies come together to further develop a holistic approach to digitalization. At its heart, of course, is the Digital Twin. This is coupled with data availability, like IT OT convergence, artificial intelligence and machine learning, processing power, both edge and cloud computing, and 5G.
In some application use cases we combine that with newer technologies from the gaming industry that are more familiar, such as photorealistic environments and capabilities from the virtual reality sector.
Does Siemens develop all these technologies in-house?
We have the benefit of decades long experience on our side. But nobody can do it alone. Via Siemens Xcelerator we can access strategic capabilities from our partner portfolio. Partners like NVIDIA provide photorealistic rendering capabilities that we can leverage for visualization. And Amazon Web Service within Digital Industries’ portfolio enables us to generate real value from our machine and process data.
Via Siemens Xcelerator we can access strategic capabilities from our partner portfolio.Velia Janetzky, Project Lead Industrial Metaverse at the Electronics Factory Erlangen
How can it be experienced in the factory?
We want to soon manufacture the new generation of our Siemens Xcelerator enabled motion control products here at the plant. We’re also planning new buildings to expand capacity and we are redesigning our value flow.
That means we need to move hundreds of machines, design new production systems, and coordinate dozens of project members, all while keeping the production going.
You will see evidence of this if you come to visit. You can already immerse yourself in our future layout in 3D.
You will see evidence of the Industrial Metaverse if you come visit.Velia Janetzky, Project Lead Industrial Metaverse at the Electronics Factory Erlangen
How do you begin this huge task?
We start by having a 3D laser scan of our factory, generating a point cloud, and modeling our Digital Twin in 3D asset against that point cloud scan.
Once we have that very trustworthy as-is layout, we can then move those assets into their future positions.
The Digital Twin helps us plan and validate the new buildings in the greenfield as well as to adapt existing areas, i.e. brownfield areas.
And how does the Industrial Metaverse help here?
The Industrial Metaverse will go one step further and create a virtual place where you can meet virtually and make real-world engineering decisions based on the Digital Twin models. Operational data, simulations, buildings, etc., are combined to create a visual scene that accurately reflects reality.
Like a multiplayer computer game, work jointly in one virtual world or project, this helps break up silos.
We leverage the new Digital Twin of that new layout, put it in a virtual environment, and let experts like our health and safety managers and those responsible for infrastructure dive right in, actually walk through that new layout, and tell us what else needs to be considered from their experts point of view.
Like a multiplayer computer game, work jointly in one virtual world or project, this helps break up silos.Velia Janetzky, Project Lead Industrial Metaverse at the Electronics Factory Erlangen
Which features have customers and potential customers who have visited the factory been most interested in?
Our demonstrations on the layout planning with the Digital Twin have caught people’s attention. We’ve also shown how to use synthetic data to train automation systems.
Using data availability (IoT connectivity) to combine the real and digital worlds– in which customers see that what I do in real life to a robot arm is (almost) simultaneously rendered in the twin – really brings it home. That’s our crowd pleaser.
What are the advantages of using the Digital Twin and the Industrial Metaverse vs. traditional planning methods?
Using Digital Twins, we can ramp-up and implement new production systems faster. We can generate synthetic data to train our AI algorithms and in the future we want to use physics simulation to validate processes or changes to processes before we do it in the real world.
You mentioned that in the metaverse, you can mirror systems and processes. What does that entail?
Let me go back to the example with the robot arm. We connected a real robot with its virtual, cinematized Digital Twin. We created a live connection between the digital representation and the real asset. All movements performed by this robot arm in real life are mirrored in the Industrial Metaverse by its Digital Twin. The availability of the movement data allows us to jump back in time, as we can simulate these movement sequences again and again in the digital world, independent of reality.
So the Industrial Metaverse allows you to go back to the past. Can you use it to see the future?
What we’re hoping for is that we can look back into the past and use simulations to predict the future. Our vision for the future is to be able to automatically feed real changes on the production floor back into the Digital Twin, so that we can sustain that connection between the real and digital worlds.
We’re working very closely with our partners to learn and accelerate the Industrial Metaverse together.Velia Janetzky, Project Lead Industrial Metaverse at the Electronics Factory Erlangen
When can we experience the first Industrial Metaverse?
The Industrial Metaverse is still emerging. We’re still implementing pilot projects and are learning. We’re working very closely with our partners to learn and accelerate the Industrial Metaverse together.
Quelle:
Foto: Product and production planning via Digital Twin technology and Virtual Reality
