Collaborative Factory Layout Planning With Building Information Modeling

Manufacturing companies are facing an increasingly turbulent environment. In order to respond to these dynamic market conditions, products and thus also production systems have to be adapted more frequently and much faster. However, time and cost targets are often missed by classic factory planning approaches due to the lack of interoperability. Therefore, new ways have to be found in factory planning to overcome these problems. Building Information Modeling (BIM), which is used in the construction industry, provides a promising method for collaboration and interaction in complex projects. Therefore, an approach is presented to systematically implement the BIM method in the factory layout planning process. The aim of this approach is to achieve a higher degree of collaboration between the individual specialist planners in earlier planning phases in order to reduce time and costs over the entire project and to lead to better and more valid planning decisions and results. For this purpose, the individual roles in the planning process are defined, a process diagram for layout planning is drawn up, and a basic data set is specified for the systematic entry of the trades.