Adaption of the Level of Development to the Factory Layout Planning and Introduction of a Quality Assurance Process

Abstract

Current developments and trends are causing an increasingly turbulent environment for manufacturing companies. 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 poor communication, inadequate tools, and lack of interfaces. Therefore, new ways have to be found in factory planning to overcome these problems. Building Information Modeling, which is already used in the construction industry, provides a promising method for the collaboration of stakeholders based on digital models. This would allow communication to be structured, new tools to be used, and interfaces to be stabilized to improve the target achievement in factory planning projects. However, which information should be provided in which level of detail in which phase of a factory planning project and how the quality of this information can be ensured has not yet been answered. A possible solution to these questions is addressed in this article. First, the concept of the so-called Level of Development, i.e. the geometric and non-geometric definition of the model contents, is transferred to factory layout planning. Then, based on two use cases, the process of quality assurance is defined.