Mastering the Metaverse

I just got back from the Innovation Experience Day which was held at SAP’s Hudson Yards location in New York. Together with SAP Endorsed App Partner Team Viewer, we were able to share a vision of the future and the role mixed reality will play. The metaverse featured heavily and I was thrilled to welcome the godmother of the Metaverse Cathy Hackl to host our fireside chat.

Metaverse actually means beyond the universe and that is exactly where I see the next wave of digitalization. New hardware on the horizon allows us to immerse ourselves even further in the virtual world, but it’s not all plain sailing.

According to Brian Ballard, Senior Vice President, Solution Delivery at Team Viewer, the core of the Metaverse is augmented, mixed and virtual reality is changing the interface with compute. They are opening fascinating new paradigms in social and commercial interactions. TV is focused on how these new(ish) interface evolutions open up new industrial interactions, connecting real and digital representations of assets.

?This opens up a slight oxymoron because what seems to be a challenge can also be viewed as a huge opportunity and that is training.

Here’s an example. Tunnel boring machines. There are about 50 such machines around the globe. As you can imagine, we are talking heavy duty industrial machinery. It is very expensive to create a training center version of them and the physical experience is limited. The metaverse opens a new world of opportunities – the supplier of the machines holds the blueprints and knowledge on how to operate them – each machine can be represented digitally. Potential customers or contractors want to learn how to operate and maintain these machines. Digital models make education and learning more accessible and available to a larger audience that can help overcome talent shortages. At the same time, digital models allow for less skilled workers to upskill and get on the job technology training.

The Industrial Metaverse can also make a difference in driving customer success and value which makes it a topic close to my heart. As I already mentioned before, it makes it easier to upskill and certify operators and technicians on large, complex machines and equipment – it also makes it easier to train new employees. By leveraging virtual reality and the metaverse as the platform, this training process can begin as soon as the deal is signed. And can be easily updated, and repeated, layering in augmented reality as part of the ongoing operations processes throughout the entire supply chain. This translates into a huge potential to reduce the time needed to get equipment running effectively once they are delivered, and continually operate at maximum efficiency. And again, this is where enterprise systems that support end to end processes like design to operate will help to plan, predict and orchestrate along the entire supply resource chain.

Let’s dig a little deeper. It is no secret that SAP and business process excellence are synonymous with each other. We have solutions that will help to continually innovate in different industries. It is best to start by taking a step back to see the bigger picture, and in particular the larger business processes.

Take Design to Operate for example, which spans the entire product journey from initial idea through to going to market and operating the machinery. At the initial creation stage, virtual and mixed reality helps engineers make their ideas come to life. The Metaverse is a massive collaboration experience, which has the potential to directly involve your customers and suppliers in the discovery process ultimately fostering co-innovation.

It doesn’t stop here. No matter how brilliant or impressive the idea, the financial side of the house must be solid. Solutions like SAP’s Early Product Lifecycle Costing helps calculate the costs of new equipment. When you combine these two aspects you have a seamless flow between ideas created in the metaverse and solutions that help to estimate the impact on costs. We can help enterprises to iterate faster and identify opportunities for cost optimization in their supply chain. Then using technologies such as AR to bring information from the back end, service instructions, or quality instructions directly to the shop floor worker or the field service engineer. In other words, augmented reality can be part of your digital transformation and an extension of design to operate processes.

Just think of how the Metaverse and Industrial Metaverse can become an open innovation space to optimize parts of the whole product with customers, suppliers and start-ups from around the world. Early metaverse adopters have a huge competitive edge as they reimagine business. By bringing together the physical and digital world, infinite opportunities arise.

What do you think? Where do you want to start your journey into the metaverse?