The Metaverse has infinite potential with rewards for smart exploration. Even in its simplest form, the Metaverse technologies as we know are a powerful new way to connect, trade, and represent oneself in a digital setting. It is the next frontier in communications and a digital economy, where users can create, buy and sell goods.
It presents an opportunity to revolutionize digital interactions with wide ranging impacts on supply chain, e-consumers and even organizational behaviors and structures. Especially in the realm of customer relationship management, it promises to take e-commerce marketing to the next level. From memorable brand experiences to motivating employee training to customer acquisition in B2B and B2C – suddenly everything seems possible.
Successful implementation of the Metaverse for supply chain transformation for any organization depends on their ability to migrate existing communities and systems like ERP into this new space.
Manufacturing Sector
If we look at the manufacturing sector, AR/VR and Digital Twinning will play an integral role for metaverse integration. It will provide a digital representation of a physical asset, system, or process. Allowing organisation to detect, predict, prevent and optimize their operations through real time analytics to deliver business value.
This can potentially help customers across three core areas:
- Asset: Allowing optimised allocation of assets across the supply chain, run production scenarios and even train operators in a more immersive environment. Helping avoid the start and stop of physical manufacturing facilities as well as long down times and learning curves in factories.
- It can also be used to train people about the safety procedures to be followed in case of any emergency. Additionally it can help businesses in fulfilling consumer demands for customised products. Which in the current system are challenging to produce cost effectively in traditional factories that are presently engineered for mass manufacturing.
- Network: Models of different system scenarios enable the user to understand, predict, and optimize which asset strategy or design is the most reliable and cost-effective, and to evaluate how the system could be modified to increase reliability and production output.
- Process: It would enable the stakeholders within or external to a business to collaborate. It could be for the design of a new product, they can share it with other manufacturers within their industry and iterate based on feedback. It will enable to shorten the product life cycle for new products and increase the speed of development of a workable design. Speeding the process fulfilling consumer desires for customized products
Benefits
- Increased reliability and availability- This integration will enable businesses to monitor, simulate and control an asset, process or network as an effective strategy to improve system performance.
- Reduced risk- It will lead to better protection of employee health and safety, the environment, and business objectives, by reducing asset- and process-related incidents and avoiding unplanned downtime.
- Lower maintenance costs- There will be a provision to predict issues before breakdowns occur, order parts, and schedule repairs at times that don’t impact production goals
- Improved production- It can ensure product quality by providing insight into the performance of assets and processes in real-time.
- Faster-time-to-value- We can leverage industry expertise, easy-to-use tools, and the most complete Blueprint catalog that provide the analytics and real-time capabilities that industry needs
Supply Chain/ Logistics
Next we can look at SupplyChain, focusing on logistics operations
Technology Used that can be used are:- Blockchain, Immersive Technology(AR/VR) and Digital twinning.
Global supply chains are complex and difficult to understand, and there is a demand for greater transparency by customers, investors, employees and stakeholders. Both corporate and consumer customers want transparency about the environmental and collateral impacts of the supply chains with whom they’re doing business.
- The metaverse integration will enhance supply chain transparency with 3D representations of how products are made, distributed and sold. This would also mean interested stakeholders will gain visibility into lead times, transit times, shipping delays and even real time shipping costs.
- Implementing innovative Blockchain solutions will afford greater transparency and visibility. This will provide increased accountability and ensure transparency across the supply chain. Providing a detailed insights into every single event and taking informed actions. This enhanced visibility enables us to manage suppliers better, conduct more efficient quality checks, and drastically reduce time and costs at various levels of the supply chain.
Benefits:
- Greater transparency and reliability: As the metachain allows customers to monitor their products and production chain, and the auditors can easily and securely verify any transaction remotely and maintain control of all phases. The information stored on blockchain cannot be tampered and changed making it more secure than any other existing solution.
- Enhance the customer’s trust and effectiveness of supply chains: Making them a more active/ engaged participant in the product life cycle. Becoming a more supportive CRM tool as well
There is a still a long way to go before this integration can materialise all the benefits it can possibly provide. But it does provide a promising future for sure.
