Planning is production

Construction is increasingly becoming a logistical challenge, requiring a different understanding of processes. Industrial element builders benefit from up-to-date planning based on real-time data. Because, not sales determines planning and production, but rather freight scheduling. In other words, when should what be delivered? That is a substantially different approach. Speaking is Henk Jan Nieuwenhuis, who on the BIM4Production platform combines one integral planning with integral control of production.

"In the ideal world, you want to be able to plan and produce just-in-time," says Nieuwenhuis. "Most of the frustration at companies lies in the fact that production sets the schedule, instead of the schedule driving production. You don't want a schedule that is 'cast in concrete' six or 10 weeks in advance. In addition, a lot of ambiguity arises because different departments have separate schedules creating multiple "truths. That makes you anything but flexible. Projects shift continuously. If you are not flexible in this, you run the risk of always producing at the wrong time, with all its consequences. The closer production is to delivery, the easier it is to shift schedules so that you produce what you deliver. And so this also prevents an unnecessary stock of finished goods. However, this requires insight and, above all, integrated planning and control of production. We solve that with BIM4Production Planning."

BIM4Production Planning is suitable for industrial element builders in the broadest sense of the word. "The core of the solution lies in the starting point: a loose individual element and not a project," Nieuwenhuis clarifies. "Such an individual element is created during the engineering phase. However, planning at industrial element builders proceeds from coarse to fine. From coarse planning at project or capacity level to planning at element level, once a BIM model is available. At all those stages, you don't want to have separate plan files in all kinds of formats, because that results in two or more truths. The flow goes from transport (when do you need something on the building site) via production to the front end: when must the engineering be ready? So you plan backwards, so to speak. When do you need an element, when should it be produced, and when should you start ordering components and parts?"

Because BIM4Production's platform integrates both planning and control of production (via MES), there is only one truth. "One truth, but in different manifestations," adds Nieuwenhuis. "In the rough phase, we plan out a project in lead time. For example, it automatically calculates which steps need to be ticked off in order to have the final BIM model ready on time, in order to produce and deliver on time on that basis. Once the BIM model is in, this is recorded as a step. Even if it is in early or late. And so all essential steps are completed. In addition, there is an overall planning of all the different projects in one view. Once engineering is complete, we move on to element planning. There the BIM model is imported and we can "grab" each individual element. Over the past period, we have put enormous effort into the development of the element planning and tested it extensively at Danilith's plant in Belgium."

In element planning, the plant is visualized. "The great thing is that we now get back in real time the position of the elements and corresponding statuses from the production environment. Every time an element moves internally to another place, it is registered in BIM4Production Planning. With that, planning and production have become real-time," Nieuwenhuis emphasizes. "You can see in Danilith's dashboard the elements moving digitally through the plant. The planner knows exactly which element is in which production step. This is because we have linked an MES system to the planning system. Previously, these were always separate systems. Real-time planning means you can produce in the order you deliver."

Companies that do not have an MES system can share that same information with BIM4Production Planning through the Elements App. According to Nieuwenhuis, it is also possible to work with RFID technology, where elements are recognized by a unique tag. "We will soon be able to use that same tag for quality control, both in production and during assembly. We will roll out this functionality later this year, but we can already show it now in our demo room." And it doesn't stop there either. Nieuwenhuis: "The plan challenge in precast and system construction is a plan challenge of cooperating industrial element builders. We are still serving individual element builders with BIM4Production today, but in the coming years we are aiming for interoperability; a chain of production companies that coordinate demand. This, too, is Industry 4.0."