Digital Twins, Open Standards, and Sustainability: Exploring the Industrial Metaverse with Siemens’ Virginie Maillard

Announcer:
Today on Building the Open Metaverse

Virginie Maillard:

We live in a time of disruption and challenges. At the same time we have unprecedented, powerful technologies in our toolbox. It makes me think we have the fantastic opportunity to shape the future we want.

Announcer:
Welcome to Building the Open Metaverse. Where technology experts discuss how the community is building the open metaverse together. Hosted by Patrick Cozzi and Marc Petit.

Marc Petit:

Welcome back to Building the Open Metaverse, season six, the podcast that showcases the community of artists, developers, researchers, and entrepreneurs who are building the internet of tomorrow.

My name is Marc Petit, and my co-host is Patrick Cozzi. Patrick is unfortunately not with us today, he's busy running Cesium. And, by the way, I'll take this opportunity to mention that this podcast has been made possible for the past few years by the support of Cesium.

Thank you to Patrick and Cesium for allowing us to do this podcast.

As you know, our guests share insights straight from the front line of metaverse development, discussing the latest tools, techniques, and their vision for this new frontier.

Joining us today is Virginie Maillard, head of global research in simulation and digital twin at Siemens Digital Industry; with a background spanning the automotive industry at Renault and now leading cutting-edge initiatives at Siemens, Virginie brings a wealth of experience and expertise to the conversation. So welcome to the show, Virginie.

Virginie Maillard:

Hello.

Marc Petit:

This podcast has a tradition, which is talking about you and your background, and so can you tell us about your journey to the metaverse?

Virginie Maillard:

Well, my personal journey started very early, as early as I was a teenager. I like science fiction. I read a lot of books talking about time travelers, and teleportation. My favorite French novelist at that time was René Barjavel. My favorite book was La Nuit Des Temps, translated in English as The Ice People. I'm still fond of such books and movies. Recently, I read the famous Snow Crash, from Neal Stephenson; I know you had him in this podcast, and it is just amazing how he described in the nineties, the metaverse as it is today.

On the movie side, of course, Ready Player One is very popular, but I would like to name a new series called Upload that describes very well the relationship between humans and the virtual worlds. Now, more seriously on the professional side, as you know, I started my career in the automotive industry. I had been in contact very early to a lot of innovations in the way of 3D visualizations. For example, immersive reviews of new vehicle design with both interior and external visualization, also design reviews, and special glasses to have a 3D rendering.

Now, I'm even more involved with the metaverse journey since I have been leading the research of Siemens simulation and digital twin, and the industry Metaverse is a very important part of activity at this moment. This is my journey to the metaverse.

Marc Petit:

We had the pleasure to have Anne Asensio last season, who was also with Patrick Le Quément, and Bruno Simon, and the whole gang pioneering 3D. It was pretty pioneering work at the scale of the world that happened at Renault at that time.

When you reflect back, what's the difference between what you're seeing today in the industrial space on the software side versus your experience in the automotive industry?

Virginie Maillard:

There are, of course, differences but also common points. Let's start with the differences. Maybe the automotive is one domain of applications versus Siemens's portfolio, which is very large. Siemens's portfolio is a lot of hardware and software components dedicated to automation, electrification, and digitalization solutions for diverse customers like factories, building, transportation, and healthcare. 

Again, I think the automotive is one domain of application in this large scope. The common point definitely is, like any industry, that they share the same goal of sustainability and digitalization.

Marc Petit:

Let's go back to the industrial metaverse and digital twins.

First of all, I think it's good to reframe things a little bit and put some meaning behind the words. What are your definitions of the industrial metaverse? Please contrast them with other usages of the word metaverse.

Virginie Maillard:

I think it's important to define the industrial metaverse because today we have other types of metaverse like the consumer metaverse, which is socializing, consuming, and entertaining in virtual worlds, typically for the gaming or social media, or the enterprise metaverse, which is related to virtual workspaces for office collaboration.

The industrial metaverse we are talking about in Siemens is definitely a virtual place where you can interact with the digital twin to make engineering decisions to solve real-world problems.

To be more explicit, in the industrial metaverse, you can visualize the digital twin in an ultra-intuitive and photorealistic way. You can interact with a digital twin and see in real-time the impact of your actions. You can collaborate in real-time on the digital twin in the virtual world. This is an industrial metaverse, as we define it in Siemens.

Marc Petit:

Digital twins are kind of the foundation of that industrial metaverse, right? How would you define those digital twins?

Virginie Maillard:

Because it is all about combining real and digital worlds, we strongly believe that the digital twin represents the foundation of the metaverse for industrial purposes.

Industrial purpose means to design and operate a real-world system, like factories, and building a great transportation system. Then, it's just an evolution of what we are already doing today with more immersion and real-time interaction with the digital twin.

Marc Petit:

Can you highlight some of the applications that are the most advanced that you've been seeing recently?

Virginie Maillard:

We have some examples in my team. We have demonstrated, for example, collaboration in an industrial place where you onboard different stakeholders; It could be a machine provider, it could be a factory operator, it could be an engineer, and they come together in the same place, and then they collaborate in this virtual place around physical-virtual representation. They can decide what to change, how to redefine, they can test different scenarios, and then they can decide to implement in real life.

This is a very important, simple example of the metaverse as it is possible to do today. It is for industry, manufacturing applications, design, and engineering phases. You also have the possibility, for example, to co-create with different engineers and test different concepts very quickly in this virtual space.

Marc Petit:

We'll zoom back and talk about Siemens. We've seen Siemens giving keynotes at CES. We've seen your CEO virtually on stage with Jensen Huang during the latest GTC keynote.

Can you summarize the strategy driving the digitalization of the industry?

Virginie Maillard:

The core strategy of Siemens is clear and simple; it's all about combining real and digital worlds. And by the way, combining the real and digital worlds is the exact definition of a digital twin and industry metaverse we just talked about. We aim to help our customers accelerate their business by innovating faster, producing better, and reducing cost while managing at the same time the biggest challenge of our time: decarbonization and resource efficiency.

That's why I believe Siemens is in a strong position to achieve this strategy of combining real and digital thanks to its leadership on this technology, both hardware and software. But as you know, in innovation, no company can innovate alone.

Working in a core system, it's necessary to bring valuable products to our customers. I would say that simply makes the innovation happen. That's why Siemens has announced so many partnerships, showing the need to collaborate with everybody in the ecosystem.

Marc Petit:

Witnessing those industries, technical software industry, CAD industry, over the past few years, the tendency towards openness, I think, is new and actually very, very welcome.

What are the key advantages and potential use case that you see? What's in it for them?

Virginie Maillard:

At the very beginning of the process in the design and engineering phase, you can use the data to perform simulations to predict and optimize your product before investing in an expensive prototype. 

The key advantage at this stage is really to gain time and to save cost. Very soon, designers and engineers will experience what we call immersive engineering. We have announced at CES in January, a partnership with Sony that brings new capabilities of visualization.

With this new technology, we will be able to explore and validate new concepts and collaborate with colleagues in the metaverse.

In the end, the benefit is really to accelerate the time to market of innovation, so time-saving, cost-saving, innovate faster. The other benefit is when you go to production and operation phase, you can test virtually some changes of the layout of your factory production line, and you see the impact before deciding to implement it.

Using digital twins in the industrial metaverse at this stage is to really minimize the impact of such changes on the performance, quality, and safety of your operations.

You can also involve an expert remotely in the metaverse, and they can connect and explore a solution altogether. It's full of potential and it's really all about performance and quality of your operations.

Marc Petit:

You mentioned quality and performance. What about sustainability? As you know, all companies and all of us want to be more environmentally conscious right now.

Will the industrial metaverse help?

Virginie Maillard:

The industrial metaverse definitely offers enormous potential to transform our economies and industries, and to target, of course, sustainability challenges associated. The core idea here is to leverage the infinite capability of data to accelerate the transition to net-zero economies and self-sufficiency.

Again, if I take the different phases of the process in the design phase when you can realistically test some different options in the metaverse, and then use material resources only at the very end when you're sure about your design, you're saving a lot of resource and time to do that.

If you operate a factory or building or even a city, you can constantly optimize operations by simulating different scenarios in the metaverse with a focus to reduce energy consumption; it's really a great benefit for the planet.

Another use case of the metaverse is when you have a disruption in a manufacturing site, you can call all experts in the world to solve the problem without having them travel, and of course, as a consequence, you cause a lot of CO2 emissions. So these are a few examples. There is a full panel of applications still to be explored, but definitely, it's all about saving resources and limiting energy consumption and emissions.

Marc Petit:

All right. Let's transition from sustainability to another important topic which is interoperability. Siemens is a member of the Alliance for OpenUSD, and Siemens is also leading the industrial metaverse world group at the Metaverse Standards Forum. You have been elected to the board of the Metaverse Standards Forum along with Patrick and myself, and thank you for that.

I think these are very sound and very active engagements of Siemens alongside companies like NVIDIA, Autodesk, Adobe, and Epic and all those people who are working on that. During the CES keynote, I was surprised to see Cedrik Neike do a whole segment on the leadership of Pixar for OpenUSD, so it was interesting to see Siemens praising Pixar on stage.

Tell us why open standards like OpenUSD are so crucial for the industrial metaverse.

Virginie Maillard:

To innovate we cannot innovate alone, and we need to be all together in an ecosystem. I don't know if you have heard about Siemens Accelerator; it is a digital business platform, an open ecosystem to enable co-creation between customers, Siemens, and certified partners. It can be a very large tech company or independent software developers.

To answer your question about the importance of having open standards, it's crucial to standardization, interoperability, openness, and flexibility to allow this ecosystem to work. That's why Siemens is joining the Alliance of OpenUSD to help our customers take advantage of the strengths of USD across the variety of industrial applications.

We added support for the USD format to the Siemens Accelerator portfolio of industrial software, and Siemens plans to integrate the GT standard using USD, extending USD to the broad ecosystem of GT users and Siemens customers.

Regarding the Metaverse Standards Forum, we decided to join this forum in a different position, on the board, as you said, but also in the lead of interoperability because we believe that it's key to creating this condition of success for the metaverse.

It's really about the performance and interoperability that will ensure the success of metaverse adoption.

Marc Petit:

Yeah, this is great. It's fantastic to see companies like Siemens really supporting those efforts in the organization.

But what do you see as the challenges or barriers to implementing open standards?

Virginie Maillard:

The usual challenge is the difficulty to coordinate multiple stakeholders and obtaining a consensus. There are also legacy aspects we have to respect and to take into account. It's never easy, but the best way to address these challenges is to create such communities, typically in the Metaverse Standards Forum and Alliance for OpenUSD.

Marc Petit:

It's getting this alignment of people together, and I think that's why the forum is such a fantastic organization. It kind of abstracts itself from the politics of standard development, but it just focuses on the core issue, which is driving interoperability, so it's fantastic to see Siemens as a part of that.

You are a leader in the cutting-edge field of digital twins in the industrial metaverse, which has historically been very male-dominated.

What challenges or unique perspectives have you encountered as a woman in your career?

Virginie Maillard:

Honestly, I never had a problem to evolve in a male-dominated industry. I have always felt respected and supported in my career. But your question is interesting. To highlight the importance of having a team with diverse perspectives to address new complexity, and this is the case in the industrial metaverse research, by the way.

Usually, to win the game of innovation, you have to be very efficient and quick to understand problems and challenges. If you decide to play without a multicultural team, then you won't see all the possibilities, and you will lose against companies that have the full range of mindsets to address these complex problems.

Marc Petit:

What advice would you give to other women aspiring to make a similar mark as you did in those rapidly evolving technology sectors?

Virginie Maillard:

My advice is pretty simple: believe in yourself and just do it. Be strong and courageous, and ignore people. They'll try to discourage you, particularly in the domain of innovation. This is a message for all talented women I have met in my career.

But if I had a special message to deliver, it would be to the little girls; I'm not sure they're listening to your podcast, but at least their parents

Marc Petit:

We're trying to have them listen.

Virginie Maillard:

We know. I encourage them to choose STEM education because it's a lot of fun, and you can change the world.

Marc Petit:

Anne told us the same thing last year, you should swing for the fence and don't let people drag you down.

What do you envision as a very likely roadmap for digital twins and the industrial metaverse over the next year? The ten-year vision is always easy because flying cars and immersive everything, but more like a shorter point of view. What do you think are the next big steps?

Virginie Maillard:

I really believe it's a natural evolution of technologies we already have today. It's not a big change; it's really a maturation, and all these technologies are coming together and are at a point being available largely and easily.

We never had so many powerful technologies in front of us. We have digital twins, artificial intelligence, connectivity, and automation. These technologies are already playing a big role in the industry today, and they will play a major role in the future, coming together and helping to solve the challenges of the future.

They have matured recently at a phenomenal pace, and we are now beginning to combine all these technologies together to solve concrete problems. The industrial metaverse is typically in this definition of combining all of this matured technology and activating the power of digitalization.

Marc Petit:

Do you see AI as a disruption or an acceleration?

Virginie Maillard:

Siemens has been working on AI for many, many decades; that's why it's nothing new.

I see it as an acceleration because it's an access for everybody to this power of analyzing very quickly and giving some insight very quickly. It's a kind of augmentation of what the human is able to do. It's human augmentation.

Marc Petit:

A lot of our listeners are in companies that are looking at those technologies. What advice would you give companies looking to adopt and implement those technologies?

What should they look for, and where do they start?

Virginie Maillard:

The point is to start developing and implementing a clear digitalization strategy in the company, and the strategy includes, for example, investing in edge hardware, industrial safety networks, digital simulation technology, and artificial intelligence.

All these solutions that exist today will be a key component of the metaverse of tomorrow, and they're already bringing a lot of value to our ecosystem.

All digitalization strategies must focus more than ever on factors such as interoperability and openness of digital solutions. That's why that platform concept, and in particular the Siemens Accelerator I was talking about earlier, are so valuable. They make simple, open, and flexible solutions accessible to everybody, and they are the basic prerequisites for building and participating in the future of the metaverse.

Marc Petit:

I want to come back to something you said about this being a continuation. This may not be an obvious concept; we always feel as if something magic happened in the past few years, but I think it's interesting to note that Siemens invented digital mock-ups pretty much 25 or 30 years ago, and the JT format was at the core of that strategy.

I think it's important to remember that because you guys have been at it for a long time. Digital mock-ups have new names for the metaverse digital twins, but those ideas have been there for quite some time.

Do you have any final thoughts or insights that you'd want to share with our audience, especially regarding those topics of the metaverse in open standards?

Virginie Maillard:

We live in a time of disruption and challenges. At the same time we have unprecedented, powerful technologies in our toolbox. It makes me think we have the fantastic opportunity to shape the future we want.

I am just reminded of the sustainability discussion we had about how to leverage digitalization to solve real problems. I really believe that applying technology with purpose, as we see in Siemens, is in our hands, and we are just to activate this power.

Marc Petit:

So you're an optimist?

Virginie Maillard:

Yes.

Marc Petit:

I agree. It's easy to get worried, and as you know, negative sentiment travels faster than anything else on social media. But I think, as you said, the digitalization, the virtualization, done right, will help make things faster and cheaper and help bring us together.

I think we've seen technology bringing us apart, maybe, in the past 20 years. I think 3D emergence, interactivity, and more time. As the machines do more, we'll have more time. Hopefully, technology will start to bring us together, so I share your optimism right there.

Our last question of the podcast is the shout-out. Is there any person, organization, or institution to whom you would want to give a shout-out today?

Virginie Maillard:

Since you talked about female careers in the industry, I'd like to name two strong female leaders I have worked with who are role models for many, including myself.

One is Nadine Leclair, who has the position of SVP expert fellow for Renault Group. She was also the SVP project engineer in engineering and the co-engineering of Renault Group. Most recently, she was president of FISITA, the international network for automotive engineers. She has had a very inspiring career as an engineer.

The other one is Barbara Humpton, the CEO of Siemens USA. She hosts a podcast called The Optimistic Outlook. The Optimistic Outlook is about the opportunity to shape the future and address societal challenges thanks to technology. This vision resonates with me a lot, so I'm giving her a special shout-out.

Marc Petit:

Thank you very much for that, we'll try to put out links if we can to this podcast. Fantastic.

Thank you so much, Virginie. I really want to thank you for taking the time to join us today and share your invaluable expertise. Your passion for the industrial metaverse, digital twins, and open standards shines through.

I'm grateful you could provide us with such inspiring insights from your career journey as a trailblazing woman leader. Thank you so much, Virginie.

Also, a huge thank you to our ever-growing audience. Don't hesitate to reach out to us through our website, our YouTube page, or through our LinkedIn page; we always enjoy hearing from you.

Thank you so much, and see you all on the next episode of Building the Open Metaverse.

Thank you.