Simulation is becoming a core pillar of industrial automation. According to Global Market Insights, the global digital twin market reached USD 13.6 billion in 2024 and is expected to grow to USD 18.9 billion in 2025, with forecasts projecting a market size of over USD 400 billion by the mid 2030s, driven primarily by manufacturing, automation, and virtual commissioning use cases. Long established as an engineering best practice, simulation is now increasingly evolving into a strategic lever across the entire automation lifecycle. 

Together with Visual Components, member of the KUKA Group since 2017, KUKA Group is accelerating the adoption of industrial simulation across engineering, planning, commissioning, and lifecycle management – delivering measurable value for customers, partners, and the manufacturing industry as a whole. “Simulation is no longer an optional engineering tool – it is a strategic capability,” says Christoph Schell, CEO KUKA Group. “With Visual Components, we are empowering our customers and partners to reduce risk, shorten time-to-market, and unlock new levels of efficiency across the entire automation lifecycle.”

KUKA Group’s ecosystem brings together international customers, system integrators, and technology experts to showcase how simulation driven ap-proaches are reshaping the way automation solutions are designed, validated, and deployed. A Simulation Event held at KUKA’s headquarters in Germany reinforced this strategic focus supported by partners of Visual Components like TWINZO, RIIICO, DUALIS, REALTIME ROBOTICS, Flexcon and Team CMC on industrial simulation. Visual Components, which launched a major update with Visual Components 5.0 in March, plays a key role, with its simulation platform enabling high fidelity digital twins, collaborative planning, and informed decision making at a very early stage – well before any physical systems are built.

From Planning Tool to Strategic Advantage

Industrial simulation is rapidly evolving from a niche planning aid into a decisive competitive differentiator. By combining KUKA’s automation expertise with Visual Components’ advanced manufacturing simulation software, customers can virtually design, scale, and optimize production systems with a high level of accuracy and confidence. “This approach enables manufacturers to validate layouts and robot concepts at an early stage, identify bottlenecks and optimize cycle times before commissioning, improve collaboration between engineering, production, and management and reduce costly changes during installation and ramp-up”, says Mikko Urho, CEO Visual Components. For KUKA Group, this represents a strategic step toward more predictive, data-driven automation solutions – aligned with the growing demand for flexibility, resilience, and faster innovation cycles. “As a long standing strategic partner of KUKA, the integration of Visual Components is a natural and complementary step. One advantage lies in the enhanced visualization of major investments, enabling a much faster and clearer understanding of the full potential of both mechanical automation and digitalization”, says Alexandra Krupp, Director Process development at Freudenberg Sealing Technologies, who is a valuable partner of the KUKA ecosystem. 

Strengthening the KUKA Group Partner Ecosystem

The Simulation Event also highlights KUKA Group’s commitment to its global partner ecosystem. System integrators, engineering partners, and technology providers play a critical role in bringing simulation-driven automation to life at customer sites worldwide. “Working with KUKA and Visual Components in the development of our production cells has significantly enhanced both our product and process development. Through simulation and data driven analysis of our production data, Visual Components enables us to shorten development cycles, improve process efficiency, and bring products to market faster”, says Dr. Jürgen Fründ, Project Leader Innovation & Digital Transformation at BENTELER Automotive Components. Visual Components therefore serves as a shared platform that enables consistent workflows, faster project execution, and closer collaboration across company boundaries. 

“Using Visual Components together with KUKA technology allows us to simu-late complete production systems with an unprecedented level of realism,” says Matthias Wilhelm, Sales Director for Germany, Austria and Switzerland at Visual Components. “This fundamentally changes how we collaborate with customers and deliver projects.” For end customers, the strategic push for simulation means greater transparency and confidence in automation investments. “For us, Visual Components is a key building block within the digital engineering toolchain we are developing. We see strong strategic value in the application of Visual Components and look forward to enlarging the functionality of our product library in the eCatalog”, says Matthias Vietz, Software Engineer and Product Owner at Bosch Rexroth. 

Automation 2.0: Simulating the Future of Manufacturing

This strategic push for industrial simulation is a core element of KUKA Group’s Automation 2.0 strategy. Automation 2.0 represents the next evolution of industrial automation: moving beyond individual machines toward fully connected, intelligent, and software driven production systems. Simulation plays a critical role in this transformation by enabling virtualization, data driven decision making, and continuous optimization across the entire lifecycle of automation solutions.

By combining real world automation expertise with powerful simulation technologies such as Visual Components, KUKA Group enables customers and partners to design, test, and scale flexible production systems faster and with greater confidence. Digital twins, virtual commissioning, and collaborative simulation environments are key building blocks of Automation 2.0 – helping manufacturers respond to complexity, customization, and rapid change with agility and resilience.