Conference Paper

Industrial Metaverse for Industrial Companies: An Exploratory Study

Authors:
To read the full-text of this research, you can request a copy directly from the authors.

Abstract

For many thought leaders the Metaverse represents the next wave of digital transformation. While the media-prominent consumer and enterprise Metaverses (e.g., Meta, Microsoft) are slowly gaining momentum, more potential is seen in its adaptation for industrial environments, i.e. the Industrial Metaverse, which extends the physical-digital paradigm by integrating the most advanced technologies such as IoT, AI and XR. As literature on a holistic perspective is sparse, this study aims to explore the role of the Industrial Metaverse for industrial companies grounded on a triad of research questions. To tackle this research endeavor, we draw on an exploratory qualitative approach and empirical interview data from industrial companies in the European DACH region. The results comprise (1) 3 clusters on understanding, (2) 5 clusters on opportunities and (3) 4 clusters on obstacles. Against the inherent criticalities of the qualitative approach and non-existing real Industrial Metaverse, we make a contribution to research (insights and agenda), practice (developers and applicants) and society (public and policy makers) to better cope with this novel industrial cyberspace.

No full-text available

Request Full-text Paper PDF

To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.

ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.
Article
Full-text available
The Industrial Metaverse paradigm can be broadly described as a virtual environment that integrates various technologies such as augmented reality and mixed reality to enhance business operations and processes. It aims to streamline workflows, reduce error rates, improve efficiency, and provide a more engaging experience for employees. The promise of the Industrial Metaverse to drive sustainability and resource efficiency is compelling. Using advanced technologies such as the Industrial Metaverse is vital in an endeavor to have a competitive edge in a rapidly evolving business environment. However, the environmental impact of the technologies underpinning the Industrial Metaverse, like data centers and network infrastructure, should not be overlooked. The ecological footprint of these technologies must be considered in the sustainability equation. Researchers have warned that, by 2025, without sustainable artificial intelligence (AI) practices, AI will consume more energy than the human workforce, significantly offsetting zero carbon gains. As the Metaverse persists in evolving and gaining momentum, it will be necessary for companies to prioritize sustainability and explore new ways to balance technological advancements with environmental stewardship. However, recent studies have conjectured that the Metaverse holds the potential to reduce carbon emissions, as digital replacements for physical goods become more prevalent and physical activities like mobility and construction are reduced. Moreover, the specific extent to which this substitution can alleviate environmental concerns remains an open issue, presenting a knowledge gap in understanding the real-world impact of digital replacements. Thus, the objective of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of the Industrial Metaverse, as well as explore the environmental impact of the Industrial Metaverse. The integrative literature review design and methodological approach involved multiple sources from the Web of Science and databases such as the ACM library, IEEE Library, and Google Scholar, which were analyzed to provide a comprehensive understanding of the developments in the Industrial Metaverse. Firstly, by considering the Industrial Metaverse’s architecture, we elucidate the Industrial Metaverse concept and the associated enabling technologies. Secondly, we performed an exploration through a discussion of the prevalent use cases and the deployment of the emerging Industrial Metaverse. Thirdly, we explored the impact of the Industrial Metaverse on the environment. Lastly, we address novel security and privacy risks, as well as upcoming research challenges, keeping in mind that the Industrial Metaverse is based on a strong data fabric. The results point to the Industrial Metaverse as having both positive and negative environmental effects in terms of energy consumption, e-waste, and pollution. Research, however, indicates that most Industrial Metaverse applications have a positive environmental impact and subsequently trend toward sustainability. Finally, for sustainability in the Industrial Metaverse, enterprises may consider utilizing renewable energy sources and cloud services. Furthermore, we examined the effects of products on the environment, as well as in the creation of a circular economy.
Article
Full-text available
Smart manufacturing has been transforming toward industrial digitalization integrated with various advanced technologies. Metaverse has been evolving as a next-generation paradigm of a digital space extended and augmented by reality. In the metaverse, users are interconnected for various virtual activities. In consideration of advanced possibilities that may be brought by the metaverse, it is envisioned that industrial metaverse should be integrated into smart manufacturing to upgrade industry for more visible, intelligent and efficient production in the future. Therefore, a conceptual model, named IMverse Model, and novel characteristics of the industrial metaverse for smart manufacturing are proposed in this article. Besides, an industrial metaverse architecture, named IMverse Architecture, is proposed involving several key enabling technologies. Typical innovative applications of the industrial metaverse throughout the whole product life cycle for smart manufacturing are presented with insights. Nonetheless, in prospect of future, the industrial metaverse still faces limitations and is far from implementation. Thus, challenges and open issues of the industrial metaverse for smart manufacturing are discussed, then outlook is provided for further research and application.
Article
Full-text available
Metaverse is the buzzword of modern society. Practitioners and researchers have discussed metaverse platforms extensively, but the potential and meaning of the metaverse remain controversial. In this paper, we investigate and identify challenges that enable the potential of metaverse platforms. If these challenges are overcome, there will be value creation for practitioners, organizations, and society. We used a qualitative approach whereby we interviewed 34 metaverse experts to identify the challenges, potential, and value associated with the metaverse. Our results demonstrate that technical and societal challenges obstruct the ability to handle user-related and organizational challenges. If these challenges can be overcome, we can use the opportunities that our participants identified to create functional, social, and emotional value. Our work theoretically contributes to current knowledge on metaverse platforms by elaborating on handling metaverse platform ecosystems and determining instrumental challenges in their realization. With our qualitative approach, we provide room and directions for future research to develop a better understanding of the role and meaning of value creation in the metaverse. Our findings are useful to practitioners by presenting challenges organizations must overcome to create metaverse platforms or participate in a metaverse ecosystem. Furthermore, we present opportunities for vendors of metaverse platforms and organizations by identifying relevant processes that can be transferred into the metaverse.
Article
Full-text available
Blockchain can be realized as a distributed and decentralized database, also known as a “distributed ledger,” that is shared among the nodes of a computer network. Blockchain is a form of democratized and distributed database for storing information electronically in a digital format. Under the framework of Industry 4.0, the digitization and digitalization of manufacturing and production systems and networks have been focused, thus Big Data sets are a necessity for any manufacturing activity. Big Data sets are becoming a useful resource as well as a byproduct of the activities/processes taking place. However, there is an imminent risk of cyberattacks. The contribution of blockchain technology to intelligent manufacturing can be summarized as (i) data validity protection, (ii) inter- and intra-organizational communication organization, and (iii) efficiency improvement of manufacturing processes. Furthermore, the need for increased cybersecurity is magnified as the world is heading towards a super smart and intelligent societal model, also known as “Society 5.0,” and the industrial metaverse will become the new reality in manufacturing. Blockchain is a cutting-edge, secure information technology that promotes business and industrial innovation. However, blockchain technologies are bound by existing limitations regarding scalability, flexibility, and cybersecurity. Therefore, in this literature review, the implications of blockchain technology for addressing the emerging cybersecurity barriers toward safe and intelligent manufacturing in Industry 5.0 as a subset of Society 5.0 are presented.
Article
Full-text available
Industry 4.0 focuses on the realization of smart manufacturing based on cyber-physical systems (CPS). However, emerging Industry 5.0 and Society 5.0 reaches beyond CPS and covers the entire value chain of manufacturing, and faces economic, environmental, and social challenges. To meet such challenges, we regard Industry 5.0 as a socio-technical revolution based on the socio-cyber-physical system (SCPS), and propose a socio-technically enhanced wisdom manufacturing architecture and framework beyond CPS-based Industry 4.0/smart manufacturing with especially concerning transition enabling technologies such as artificial intelligence, social Internet of Things (SIoT), big data, machine learning, edge computing, social computing, 3D printing, blockchains, digital twins, and cobots. Finally we address the roadmap to blockchainized value-added SCPS-based Industrial Metaverse for Industry/Society 5.0, which will achieve high utilization of resources and provide products and services to satisfy experience-driven individual needs via metamanufacturing cloud services towards smart, resilient, sustainable, and human-centric solutions.
Article
Full-text available
As physical products are increasingly augmented with digital technology, manufacturing firms have become part of the development of so-called smart products and smart services. As such, manufacturing firms are challenged by new market participants and ecosystem partners, particularly from the software development industry, and by the dynamic nature of business relationships. While the academic literature on the distinctive characteristics of ecosystems, particularly digital ecosystems, is rich, the effect of smart service ecosystems' emergence on the foundation of smart products remains uncertain. This study reports on case study research based on 47 semi-structured interviews with four companies that participate in an industrial smart service ecosystem. Taking an affordance-theoretic perspective, we uncover the antecedents of and the process of emergent smart service ecosystems. We find that smart service ecosystems have three socio-technical antecedents: a shared worldview, structural flexibility and integrity, and an architecture of participation. We explain the emergence of smart service ecosystems as the result of specialization in shared affordances and integration of idiosyncratic affordances into collective affordances. We derive seven propositions regarding the emergence of smart services, outline opportunities for further research, and present practical guidelines for manufacturing firms.
Article
Full-text available
The metaverse has the potential to extend the physical world using augmented and virtual reality technologies allowing users to seamlessly interact within real and simulated environments using avatars and holograms. Virtual environments and immersive games (such as, Second Life, Fortnite, Roblox and VRChat) have been described as antecedents of the metaverse and offer some insight to the potential socio-economic impact of a fully functional persistent cross platform metaverse. Separating the hype and “meta…” rebranding from current reality is difficult, as “big tech” paints a picture of the transformative nature of the metaverse and how it will positively impact people in their work, leisure, and social interaction. The potential impact on the way we conduct business, interact with brands and others, and develop shared experiences is likely to be transformational as the distinct lines between physical and digital are likely to be somewhat blurred from current perceptions. However, although the technology and infrastructure does not yet exist to allow the development of new immersive virtual worlds at scale - one that our avatars could transcend across platforms, researchers are increasingly examining the transformative impact of the metaverse. Impacted sectors include marketing, education, healthcare as well as societal effects relating to social interaction factors from widespread adoption, and issues relating to trust, privacy, bias, disinformation, application of law as well as psychological aspects linked to addiction and impact on vulnerable people. This study examines these topics in detail by combining the informed narrative and multi-perspective approach from experts with varied disciplinary backgrounds on many aspects of the metaverse and its transformational impact. The paper concludes by proposing a future research agenda that is valuable for researchers, professionals and policy makers alike.
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Science is a cumulative endeavour as new knowledge is often created in the process of interpreting and combining existing knowledge. This is why literature reviews have long played a decisive role in scholarship. The quality of literature reviews is particularly determined by the literature search process. As Sir Isaac Newton eminently put it: “If I can see further, it is because I am standing on the shoulders of giants.” Drawing on this metaphor, the goal of writing a literature review is to reconstruct the giant of accumulated knowledge in a specific domain. And in doing so, a literature search represents the fundamental first step that makes up the giant’s skeleton and largely determines its reconstruction in the subsequent literature analysis. In this paper, we argue that the process of searching the literature must be comprehensibly described. Only then can readers assess the exhaustiveness of the review and other scholars in the field can more confidently (re)use the results in their own research. We set out to explore the methodological rigour of literature review articles published in ten major information systems (IS) journals and show that many of these reviews do not thoroughly document the process of literature search. The results drawn from our analysis lead us to call for more rigour in documenting the literature search process and to present guidelines for crafting a literature review and search in the IS domain.
Article
Full-text available
The generative capacity for unrelated and unaccredited audiences to build and distribute code and content through the Internet to its tens of millions of attached personal computers has ignited growth and innovation in information technology and has facilitated new creative endeavors. It has also given rise to regulatory and entrepreneurial backlashes. A further backlash among consumers is developing in response to security threats that exploit the openness of the Internet and of PCs to third-party contribution. A shift in consumer priorities from generativity to stability will compel a response from regulators and markets and, if unaddressed, could prove decisive in closing today's open computing environments. This Article explains why PC openness is as important as network openness, as well as why today's open network might give rise to unduly closed endpoints. It argues that the Internet is better conceptualized as a generative grid that includes both PCs and networks rather than as an open network indifferent to the configuration of its endpoints. Applying this framework, the Article explores ways - some of them bound to be unpopular among advocates of an open Internet represented by uncompromising end-to-end neutrality - in which the Internet can be made to satisfy genuine and pressing security concerns while retaining the most important generative aspects of today's networked technology. This is a working paper. The final version of the paper may be found online without registration or charge at http://www.harvardlawreview.org/issues/119/may06/zittrain.pdf.
Article
Full-text available
Sampling is a very complex issue in qualitative research as there are many variations of qualitative sampling described in the literature and much confusion and overlapping of types of sampling, particularly in the case of purposeful and theoretical sampling. The terms purposeful and theoretical are viewed synonomously and used interchangeably in the literature. Many of the most frequent misinterpretations relate to the disparate meanings and usage of the terminology. It is important that the terminology is examined so that underlying assumptions be made more explicit. Lack of shared meanings and terminology in the nursing discourse creates confusion for the neophyte researcher and increases the production of studies with weak methodologies. This paper analyses critically purposeful and theoretical sampling and offers clarification on the use of theoretical sampling for nursing research. The aim is not to make prescriptive statements on sampling; rather, to enhance understanding of the differences between purposeful and theoretical sampling for nursing research.
Conference Paper
The metaverse is often regarded as the next successor of the current internet, and also for the industrial sector, the metaverse has the potential to enhance physical-digital approaches like the Industrial Internet of Things and facilitate the shift from Industry 4.0 to 5.0. To move away from context-specific value and comprehensively grasp its potential, we develop a classification model following the research question: “[RQ] Which dimensions and characteristics are suited to holistically describe use cases of the Industrial Metaverse?” To address, we pursue a taxonomic approach leveraging the reliable taxonomy development method by Nickerson et al. (2013) based on real-world uses cases of the Industrial Metaverse. Guided by the theory of the affordances, the resulting model classifies use cases by (1) IT artifact- (dominant building block, technology materiality, technology origin), (2) Organization- (lifecycle context, environmental context, role of the human) and (3) Affordances- (lifecycle value-add, sustainability pillar, value objective, value direction, impact) -related dimensions. Keeping review- and classification-related limitations in mind, we contribute a “theory for analysis” for science and a “tool to understand and innovate” for practice.
Article
The development of any industry cannot be done without social expectations. The industrial metaverse arises from customers' emphasis on their value, their desire for immersive experiences, and their vision for untram-meled economic transactions. This paper first introduces the definition, propositions, and metrics of the industrial metaverse towards Industry 5.0. Then, based on the understanding of physical space, cyber space, and social space, this paper proposes a five-layer framework for the industrial metaverse, which covers the perception layer, networking layer, fusion layer, interaction layer, and configuration layer. Subsequently, this paper further analyzes the key enablers and potential application scenarios of the industrial metaverse towards Industry 5.0. The technical challenges at different levels and social barriers from different perspectives are discussed. Finally, this paper highlights future research directions for the industrial metaverse towards Industry 5.0. It is expected that this framework study will provide researchers with an overview of the industrial metaverse and a deeper understanding of its development potential and obstacles.
Article
In recent years, the concept of the Metaverse has attracted considerable attention. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the Metaverse. First, the development status of the Metaverse is presented. We summarize the policies of various countries, companies, and organizations relevant to the Metaverse, as well as statistics on the number of Metaverse-related publications. Characteristics of the Metaverse are identified: 1) multi-technology convergence; 2) sociality; 3) hyper-spatio-temporality. For the multi-technology convergence of the Metaverse, we divide the technological framework of the Metaverse into five dimensions. For the sociality of the Metaverse, we focus on the Metaverse as a virtual social world. Regarding the characteristic of hyper-spatio-temporality, we introduce the Metaverse as an open, immersive, and interactive 3D virtual world which can break through the constraints of time and space in the real world. The challenges of the Metaverse are also discussed.
Chapter
Metaverse expands the cyberspace with more emphasis on human-in-loop interaction, value definition of digital assets and real-virtual reflection, which facilitates the organic fusion of man, machine and material in both physical industry and digital factory. The concept of Industrial Metaverse is proposed as a new man-in-loop digital twin system of the real industrial economy which is capable of man-machine natural interaction, industrial process simulation and industrial value transaction. With the comparison with Metaverse and Digital Twin, the key features of Industrial Metaverse are summarized, which are man-in-loop, real-virtual interaction, process asserts and social network. Key technologies of Industrial Metaverse are surveyed including natural interaction, industrial process simulation, industrial value transaction and large-scale information processing and transmission technologies, etc. Potential application modes of Industrial Metaverse are given at the end as well as the challenges from technology, industry and application.KeywordsIndustrial MetaverseMetaverseMan-in-loop simulationDigital twinXRNatural interactionNFT
Metaverse Use Cases, Mehrwerte und Potenziale für den Wirtschaftsstandort Deutschland
  • H Angerer
Angerer, H. et al. (2023). Metaverse Use Cases, Mehrwerte und Potenziale für den Wirtschaftsstandort Deutschland. Bitkom.
The industrial metaverse report
  • C Chi
Chi, C. et al. (2023). The industrial metaverse report. IEEE Decentralized Metaverse Initiative.
What is the metaverse and who seeks to define it? Mapping the site of social construction
  • M Dolata
  • G Schwabe
Dolata, M., & Schwabe, G. (2023). What is the metaverse and who seeks to define it? Mapping the site of social construction. Journal of Information Technology, 38(3), 232-367.
Skype as a tool for qualitative research interviews
  • V Lo Iacono
  • P Symonds
  • D H K Brown
Lo Iacono, V., Symonds, P., & Brown, D. H. K. (2016). Skype as a tool for qualitative research interviews. Sociological Research Online, 21(2), 103-117.
The industrial metaverse -Making the invisible visible to drive sustainable growth
  • A Meige
  • R Eagar
Meige, A., & Eagar, R. (2023). The industrial metaverse -Making the invisible visible to drive sustainable growth. Arthur D. Little.
Wirtschaftsraum DACH. Statista Dossier
  • M Mohr
Mohr, M. (2021). Wirtschaftsraum DACH. Statista Dossier.
Qualitative research
  • D Silverman
Silverman, D. (2020). Qualitative research. SAGE Publications.
The emergent industrial metaverse. MIT Technology Review Insights
  • C Waxer
Waxer, C. et al. (2023). The emergent industrial metaverse. MIT Technology Review Insights.
Exploring the industrial metaverse
  • P Wellener
Wellener, P. et al. (2023). Exploring the industrial metaverse. Deloitte.