Celebrating Success
Published on : Thursday 06-10-2022
One of the buzzwords in emerging technologies in the recent past is Metaverse.
It is not a new coinage, the word having been first used by American writer Neal Stephenson in a science fiction novel named Snow Crash, published in 1992. But in October 2021, when Facebook, co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg renamed his company as Meta, the world took notice. In June 2022, global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company released a report titled ‘Value Creation in the Metaverse’. It predicts the metaverse is too big for companies to ignore as it has the potential to generate up to $5 trillion in value by 2030. While many are sceptical of the metaverse, the concept itself is not without merit. The metaverse has already found resonance in the gaming industry, and digital marketers see great potential in the technology, riding on the post-Covid trend of virtual meetings and presentations.
Metaverse is not going to be restricted to the world of gaming and entertainment. In fact the industry is already using many technologies that are at the core of the metaverse as it is evolving. According to the Mckinsey report, many global companies are already investing in metaverse, which is a logical culmination of several emerging technologies like AR/VR/MR. Industry 4.0 and other emerging technologies have already impacted the manufacturing process, making it more flexible, agile and modular. Companies today are working hard to reduce time to market, shrinking the product development time. In the process, they also save money and resources by simulating the entire production process in what is known as a digital twin – the digital representation of a physical object, process or service. In fact the digital twin is going to be the key characteristic of the industrial metaverse. This in turn also opens a lot of possibilities for improved maintenance practices that are still evolving, and a growing market.
According to a recent market research report by Fact.MR, the global predictive maintenance market is anticipated to grow from US$ 6.3 bn in 2022 to US$ 45.5 bn by 2032, an absolute dollar growth of US$ 39.3 bn. Increasing demand to reduce operation and maintenance costs is expected to fuel the market growth during the forecast period. As of 2021, the market was valued at US$ 5 bn, and is likely to register a Y-o-Y expansion worth 26% by 2022. Besides, aerospace and defense, energy and utilities, manufacturing, oil & gas transportation, healthcare, and life sciences are other sectors generating significant demand for predictive maintenance. Players in the market are also taking various efforts to strengthen the industry. The cover story of this edition, Condition Monitoring & Predictive Maintenance, examines the various aspects of this critical segment.
