From Classic Manufacturing to Dark Factories, from “Digital Twin” to Metaverse

Production processes in factories contain complex processes within themselves. With the effect of Industry 4.0 and scarce resources, the development, analysis and rearrangement of production processes has gained importance.

Production processes are the process of receiving raw materials, then processing them by humans and machines, and then creating a new value. In this process, various material/product movements take place, some processes take place, and control processes are carried out according to quality principles.

This entire production process basically creates data movements. The real-time tracking of movements in these production areas in three-dimensional environments is called “digital twin” with its general definition. The concept of Digital Twin can also take different definitions according to the industry origin of the developer.

Digital twin is the representation of a production area, facility or region to be the same as the real situation, its vehicles and tangible assets to be identical to the instant situation.

Data acquisition process

First of all, it is necessary to monitor the instant status of the production areas. For this, the Internet of Things approach is used.

With various industrial communication protocols and methods, the status of production tools and process transitions are monitored, data are collected on a central server by analyzing them in the field. At this point, it is integrated with enterprise resource planning and production planning software. Enriched data is kept on secure servers.

Digital twin – In living three-dimensional factories

The data collected with three-dimensional visualization tools are visualized in the factory environment where the model was created. The context to be applied here is basically divided into three stages.

First, real-time status information is digitized and visualized.

In the second stage, a digital environment is created in which operational processes are carried out. Here, support is provided for the decisions to be made for the operator and managers. User interactions and working parameters are tracked in workflows.

In the third stage, simulation work is also included in the previous processes. Future predictions are made by using different simulation techniques, the instantaneous state of the machines, the data collected in the past, and the instantaneous state of the factory environment.

Smart contracts and digital twin

As the digital twins created become replicas of real spaces and their forward-predicting capabilities improve, they constitute a serious field of corporate information and reporting. In companies, the security of these environments and the accuracy of the data and related reports are as important as server security. This point smart contracts can meet the need required here. In addition, it ensures that the equipment in the digital twin can be owned when necessary. This now enables equipment / machinery manufacturers to deliver all their products to their customers in a digital environment, together with their analytical features.

Metaverse and Gamification in Production – Beyond Watching

In the event that only watching is insufficient, the concept of digital twin now turns into a “metaverse” by including different concepts in its content. With advanced VR glasses, we can enter the factory area, which we have digitally twinned and perform the same operations in the physical world, in a virtual environment, we can experience the possible quality and production problems predicted and communicated to us by the system before the real thing, and we can closely experience the solution proposals.

At the point of experience, it is much easier to use game mechanics in this world where the boundaries have disappeared and to look for the solution in the accelerating effect of these mechanics and behaviors as a team. The experience created by the gamification practices of the Metaverse world will increase team performance and the ability to adapt to the system.

Nick Pelling for the importance of gamification in production tools: “It is a set of applications in the production sector that aims to make production staff fun.”

In the opinion of Fortune Business Insights, it is predicted that by 2025, gamification will constitute 75% of the workforce, especially of Generation Z.

The next step of the digital twin, which will be an important stop in the process where physical factories turn into dark factories, will be the metaverse universe. Each factory is a production universe with its own capacity and world of possibilities, waiting to be discovered with all its uncertainties. These transitions will not be sudden and sharp. Gradually, parts of this transformation will be observed in many of the existing products throughout the process.