Editor's Challenge in Digital Manufacturing - Digital Transformation of Manufacturing through Industrial Metaverse: Opportunities and Challenges for Industry 5.0

Digital transformation and industrial metaverse technology are rapidly changing the manufacturing industry, offering new opportunities for production optimization and enhanced collaboration. Similarly, Industry 5.0 describes among others the next wave of industrialization, characterized by the integration of advanced technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT), Digital Twins (DTs), eXtended Reality (XR), and Blockchain, with human-centric, sustainable, and resilient design principles. The combination of digital transformation and industrial metaverse technology enables real-time collaboration between different teams and locations based on 5G technology, by navigating into a 3D virtual and immersive environment. This technology holds several benefits, including reduced scrap and faulty parts, increased throughput, and improved training capabilities. However, there are also challenges to address, such as cyber security, compatibility, and operational costs.

Based on the abovementioned challenges, this Editor’s challenge topic delves into the digital transformation of manufacturing through the industrial metaverse, examining the opportunities and challenges presented by Industry 5.0. By exploring the status of this technology and potential future developments, this topic aims to provide insights for manufacturers looking to optimize their production processes and stay ahead of the competition, relating to themes on:

• metaverse
• Society 5.0
• human cyber-physical systems
• resilience
• sustainability
• artificial intelligence
• digital manufacturing
• extended reality
• blockchain
• digital twin

This Research Topic welcomes contributions in the form of: Brief Research Report, Original Research, Review, Mini Review, and Perspective papers so as to address the following research questions:
• How can industrial metaverse technology be utilized to enhance collaboration between manufacturing teams and optimize production processes?
• What are the potential security risks associated with implementing industrial metaverse technology in manufacturing, and how can they be mitigated?
• How can the integration of industrial metaverse technology with digital manufacturing systems improve training capabilities and enhance employee skillsets?


The Specialty Chief Editors of Frontiers in Manufacturing Technology launch a new series of Research Topics to highlight current challenges across the field of Manufacturing. Other collections in the series are:

• Editor’s Challenge in Material Forming & Removal: Towards Intelligent Processing by Advanced Process Control

• Editor’s Challenge in Life Cycle Engineering: Battery Life Cycle Engineering

Keywords: metaverse, Industrial metaverse technology, Industry 5.0, Digital transformation, Manufacturing, Digital manufacturing

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.