A something-and-nothing release from the home of Industrie 4.0, worth memorialising if only to remember that the whole metaverse concept is alive and well in the enterprise space, and to familiarise ourselves with some of the key players…
Deutsche Telekom’s international system integrator division T-Systems is working with Stuttgart-based industrial consultancy Drees & Sommer on metaverse digital-twins of Industry 4.0 factory operations. They are using Nvidia’s so-called Omniverse platform, geared for digitalisation of industrial environments. They have implemented “first successful practical projects” with unnamed customers in the automotive industry (or “a well-known car manufacturer”), they said.
The point is to be able to map people, equipment, systems, and buildings in live digital twins of production and logistics processes, and thereby to monitor overlap between them and avoid the kinds of clashes and faults that could derail Industry 4.0 transformation projects. It is a classic demonstration of the industrial metaverse concept in private enterprise spaces, as espoused by the Industry 4.0 market ever since Meta started to talk about a consumer metaverse.
The Omniverse platform lets manufacturing companies combine sundry assembly, process, conveyor, and industrial construction planning systems on a central platform, and develop new solutions off the back of it. “This enables internal external teams to work faster and more efficiently. The improvement in the data available ensures early evaluations of overall concepts, higher planning quality, and smoother commissioning – both virtually and in the real world,” said the pair.
Because even with “intensive coordination between the various trades involved”, factory projects become unravelled by “defective equipment” and other unseen obstacles, they explained. “The kinds of things that often result in costly failures in the real world can be prevented in future by creating a so-called digital twin of the factory in question… Integration of expert systems… promotes collaboration between different planning departments [and] partners,” they said.
The result is more efficient collaboration and development, leading to lower costs for planning, implementation, and operation. Greater transparency about industrial operations can also help to reduce CO₂ emissions during construction and operation of factories, they said. The work with the unnamed automotive customer/s covered the design of a pilot, recruitment of partners, and its integration and scale into production systems.
Christian Hort, senior vice president of T-Systems’ automotive business, said: “Industrial companies across all sectors are in a phase of change. The combination of technologies and knowledge from all three companies is a real game changer. A wealth of possible application scenarios offers manufacturing companies a wide range of solutions for factory and building planning.”
Mathias Stach, associate partner at Drees & Sommer, said: “We are leaders in the field of integral factory planning across the entire factory life cycle. From the integrated process, production, and industrial building concept, through planning and implementation, to commissioning and facilitating the start of production in line with time, quality, and cost specifications. Our offer covers the entire spectrum of factory and systems planning. In Europe, only a few providers offer these services from a single source.”
