Companies are benefitting from deployment of industrial metaverse use cases, says industry report

Companies with industrial metaverse use cases are experiencing notable benefits in capital expenditure (capex) reduction (15 per cent reduction), sustainability (10 per cent) and safety improvement (9 per cent) in comparison to the players who are still in the planning phase, according to a study by Ernst & Young (EY), commissioned by Nokia.

The US (65 per cent), UK (64 per cent) and Brazil (63 per cent) have the highest number of companies with plans of deploying metaverse use cases, compared to other countries across Europe (Germany 53 per cent) and Asia-Pacific (Japan 49 per cent and South Korea 49 per cent). 

According to the study, the industrial metaverse is the fusion of physical and digital worlds, with human augmentation for industrial applications including digital representations of physical industrial environments, systems, processes etc. Industrial metaverse is meanwhile also adding to business value, with an average of 80 per cent for all those who already implemented use cases for it, believing that they will have a significant impact on their business. Almost 96 per cent of respondents have witnessed how metaverse use cases allow them to accelerate the deployment, adoption and monetisation of Industry 4.0 for their businesses. 

According to the report, the maximum value lies in the use of extended reality (XR) to onboard and upskill the workforce. Respondents placed highest importance on technologies like cloud computing (72 per cent), artificial intelligence/machine learning (70 per cent) and network connectivity (68 per cent) for enabling these use cases. The enterprises are relying on a range of partners to close up the capability gaps and deploy use cases.

Whereas the primary concerns in regard to metaverse use cases lie with cyber and information security (67 per cent), data and privacy (62 per cent) and technology (50 per cent). Meanwhile, lack of expertise (45 per cent), over budget (31 per cent) and over project duration (29 per cent) were among the top challenges faced in the deployment of industrial metaverse use cases. These findings are based on the responses of 860 company representatives from four industry sectors, automotive, industrial goods and manufacturing, transportation and supply chain and logistics, and power and utilities – in the US, Brazil, UK, Germany, Japan and South Korea