In three years, I anticipate that around 40% of global engineering-oriented manufacturing companies will leverage digital twins within the industrial metaverse to enhance collaboration and accelerate time to value.
What leads me to this prediction? Let’s start with IDC’s definition of the industrial metaverse as a highly immersive environment that seamlessly integrates the physical and digital worlds, fostering shared presence, interaction, and continuity across engineering, operations, supply chains, and business functions.
In engineering domain, the industrial metaverse functions as a cloud-native, multi-domain platform for 3D visualization and collaboration, bringing products to life through integrated, physically accurate simulations. It acts as a “digital twin of digital twins,” utilizing real-time data from multiple domains such as mechanical, electrical, and software interactions.
Building this environment requires collaboration among key players, including hyperscalers and providers of simulation platforms, 3D visualization, and digital business tools. New partnerships are constantly emerging, involving major companies in digital infrastructure, cloud computing, engineering platforms, visualization technologies, and artificial intelligence — all working together to push the industrial metaverse beyond the traditional digital twin model.
What Do the Numbers Tell?
Product innovation remains a key business priority for engineering-focused manufacturing organizations, as highlighted in IDC’s 2024 Global Manufacturing Industry Core Survey (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Question: What are your company’s top business priorities over the next 2 years?
According to IDC’s 2023 Global Product and Service Innovation Survey, 25% of manufacturing respondents considered industrial metaverse technology to be “very important” for product and service innovation. This number was even higher among engineering respondents, with 34% rating it as very important.
Furthermore, 38% of respondents from companies with over 1,000 employees in IDC’s 2024 Global Manufacturing Industry Core Survey stated that Industrial Metaverse technology plays a “moderate to very high” role in supporting their company’s achievement of key operational KPIs.
As a result, the adoption of the industrial metaverse in engineering-focused manufacturing organizations is anticipated to grow steadily over the next three years.
In Conclusion
My advice for early adopters is to keep a close eye on hyperscalers, leading technology vendors, and the startup ecosystem — to stay up-to-date with the rapidly evolving landscape of industrial metaverse development. Additionally, remember that integrating real-world data with IT data to create advanced simulation and collaboration tools requires time and careful planning.
Building and nurturing digital communities and ecosystems is essential, as they will be key to future success in the industrial metaverse. Lastly, recognize that the value of the industrial metaverse extends beyond product design and engineering, reaching areas like operations, maintenance, quality, procurement, and the supply chain, among others.