The industrial metaverse could be the solution

Many companies in the industry are searching for solutions to achieve their sustainability goals and maintain competitiveness. To achieve this, it is crucial to speed up the digital transformation in the industry.

The world is in the midst of a number of global challenges, including the climate crisis. An important part of the solution is the energy transition. Fossil energy sources must be replaced with renewable ones, which are often weather-dependent. This means that production can be unpredictable and vary greatly.

To compensate for this, there are great demands on balancing the power grid. That is, adapting electricity consumption to production. Through so-called virtual power plants, local production, battery storage systems, solar cells and charging stations can be balanced. This provides energy-efficient solutions and helps grid companies when they approach maximum capacity in the power grid.

– In Norway, we mainly have hydropower, which provides more control over electricity production, but here too there will be a greater need for this form of planning as energy demand increases, explains Nils Klippenberg, CEO of Siemens AS in Norway.

New customer value from the metaverse

Siemens believes the industrial metaverse will take the industry's competitiveness one step further and contribute to sustainable development. Among other things, it can make it possible to control factory production processes and maintenance in a virtual environment through digital twins.

Klippenberg highlights one of Norway's battery factories as a Nordic spearhead in this. There, the vision of an industrial metaverse has become reality through a collaboration between Siemens and NVIDIA.

– The factory is an excellent example of an industrial metaverse. It shows that a digital twin is not just an advanced version of 3D modeling, but a simulation that continuously reacts to and learns from changes in the physical world, he explains.

The combination of local industry and Siemens' global partners, such as AWS, Microsoft and NVIDIA, in the same ecosystem, provides rapidly scalable digital competitiveness and productivity leaps, according to Klippenberg.

– In addition to a platform with compatible technologies, Xcelerator is an ecosystem where companies of different sizes can share ideas and best practices, he says, adding:

– Imagine the value creation potential for the end user as we teach AI to manage factories and optimize production. It reduces resource consumption and contributes to more efficient production and improves the quality of the end products.

Everyone can win

Traditionally, industrial automation and production equipment have been tied to a specific supplier and system. Such silos have led to data not being allowed to flow efficiently through organizations in the way that would be best for the business, thus slowing down the digital transformation in the industry.

Breaking down the silos and accelerating the digital transformation requires not only unified technological standards and cyber-secure solutions, but also new types of collaboration and partnerships between the companies operating in the ecosystem.

– The era of one dominant and closed ecosystem in companies is over. It is the systems based on equality and open exchange of information that will succeed, Klippenberg emphasizes.

Every company in the Siemens ecosystem, from small to large, local to global, is free to take advantage of these benefits and win.

– We believe, thanks to the network effect, that one plus one equals three. Therefore, Siemens Xcelerator is an important instrument for accelerating Nordic industry on the road to the digital metaverse, which in turn brings added value to customers, he says.