The Digital Multiverse

What is the SEC Digital Multiverse?

The Digital Multiverse term was coined by SEC Storage to describe the integration of their Machine Learning, Digital Twinning, Simulation and Extended Reality technologies. This technology collective provides clients with real-time performance comparison between their current-state facility (their core universe), and a multitude of alternative layouts and operational designs (their parallel universes).

D.I.D.O. (Data In, Design Out) is SEC’s parent AI that creates this multiverse by coordinating the activities of her three daughter platforms: E.L.S.A. a SKU classification platform, C.L.A.R.A., an AI warehouse designer and E.L.I.S.A., an AI-simulation platform that can benchmark the holistic performance of each parallel design against strategic and sustainability objectives. D.I.D.O. can then use this information to put forward parallel designs demonstrating consistently improved performance and clear Return on Investment.

How does it Work?

There are three phases to D.I.D.O.’s process:

1. Data Capture
2. Conceptual Design
3. Visualisation & Engineering

In the first phase, Data Capture, we ‘train’ D.I.D.O. using a variety of data to achieve two critical objectives. Firstly, a “big” operational dataset provides raw information that allows D.I.D.O. to understand the operation in detail. Secondly, answers to strategic questions are converted into a numerical system that prioritises and ‘weights’ the strategic objectives of the warehouse.

In phase two, Conceptual Design Iteration, D.I.D.O. orchestrates three daughter AI platforms to analyse, design and evaluate thousands of potential warehouse layouts. The first platform, E.L.S.A., uses machine learning to classify every SKU into six bands of products that have similar picking location needs. You may think of this as a very sophisticated ABC analysis that ensures that we place fast-moving products into larger apertures and slow-moving ones into smaller apertures.

D.I.D.O. then passes the data to C.L.A.R.A., an AI design bot trained to quickly and accurately design warehouses. C.L.A.R.A. develops a layout appropriate to E.L.S.A.’s analysis before giving that design to E.L.I.S.A., who simulates it.

Once the simulation is complete, E.L.I.S.A. calculates performance metrics and combines this with strategic objective ‘weightings’ completed earlier to create a “Design Score” out of 100, indicating this system’s overall success. Then the process starts again, albeit this time a different layout is created by C.L.A.R.A., which generates a new score, and so on, until the highest scoring system – the optimal design – has been identified. This optimal design is then turned into a precise virtual twin, which we can visualise in Virtual, Augmented or Rendered Reality using SEC XR, our Extended Reality engine.

Ultimately, through the combination of Machine Learning, AI Simulation and Extended Reality technology, we can ensure that we deliver THE optimal design, ideally suited to an operation’s specific strategic and operational requirements.

Digital Multiverse: Model your next reality with SEC