Manufacturers draw upon a variety of methods to get products out the door faster, better and less expensively. One method has CEOs revamping their facilities to handle their operating needs now and in the future - digital facility engineering (DFE). Nowadays, companies need to envision what their facility is or will be when looking at optimizing for more efficient production. They need to capture their vision digitally so different scenarios and analyses can be performed and worked out. The most important rule to remember is to know what you have and what you will need before beginning DFE. Consider the product that you are going to manufacture in your facility and allow yourself the time and tools to study it.

There are several DFE methods one can use when playing around with various facility designs:

• Going out with a tape measure to capture your facilities needs, which sounds archaic, but can be a good way to help you envision what you want.
• When deciding where to put your conveyer belts and milling machines, enter the data on a laptop. This helps eliminate one huge step - transcribing your as-built data collection notes into sketches and then drawings.
• To get things like convoluted ceilings or places where it is dangerous for people to measure, laser scanning should be used. Although there are other methods, laser scanning has proven to work the best in these instances.

"Technology is not the bottleneck today, but rather its how companies utilize it that's the problem," says Nick Andreou, engineering group manager for General Motors Corp. (Detroit, MI) - a car design and manufacturing company. "You need to have the infrastructure inside your systems that allows you to re-use data. There is an increase in cost when creating these libraries to capture info when you're first starting, but the huge advantage is that in the following years the upkeep costs for these systems is at a fraction of the initial outlay."

Communicating and Sharing Data

• Determine the master plan.
• Involve all key disciplines from day one (including contractors).
• Identify data exchange requirements.
• Arrange for free-flowing access to the same data set.
• Identify change management and communication tools (real - or near real - time collaboration).

Since participants are increasingly specializing and have limited knowledge of areas outside of their own, the technology needs to assist in identifying and/or resolving design failures along the way. Once it is understood what the needs are (who is involved, what data must be exchanged, and what post-construction concerns there might be - such as maintenance and other life cycle concerns) a company should consider supporting technologies. In addition, the less time an individual has to spend converting inputs into a usable form, the more time will be available for productive activity. It seems simple, yet data exchange is perhaps the largest productivity-killing task encountered.

"A few years ago I did a need analysis for a firm trying to get a handle around its design methodologies, and within its walls there were folks using paper, pencils, 2-D CAD systems and multiple 3-D CAD systems," says J.T. Pedersen, project manager for global automotive sales at Autodesk, Inc. (San Rafael, CA) - a software design company. "Tracing the flow of work from one group to another, we discovered that one work group alone expended about 30 percent of its time doing data translation. This example highlights just how much can be lost when standards are not successfully adopted by everyone."

DFE's Critical Elements

As project complexity and scope continue to increase, visualization tools become more and more important. Regardless of scale - looking at a small widget or a 1M square facility - the ability to visualize the big picture and share its intent with others is paramount to success. As broad direct interaction with various parts of a project becomes more difficult, the use of visualization tools lets users obtain an appreciation for elements beyond their domain and gain a better overall comprehension. Direct interaction is still necessary at some point, but where it is not possible, visualization tools can help overcome the limitations.

"These tools need to be selected in line with the long-term goals of your company," says Pedersen. "You have to ask yourself: (1) Do I want to continue generating out-of-date process sheets or enable my workers to use live, up-to-date information? (2) Do I intend to reuse design information for things like preventative maintenance activities, for facilities management, etc.? and (3) What about my customers and suppliers, do I gain any benefit from making the same benefits available to them? You have to ask these questions."

The Future

The Web is not a nicety, but a requirement. You can see who the contractors are and whether they need to have neutral formats. Without the Web, you're at risk of not communicating, creating hard feelings and losing customers. You need that communication component. This can drive the underlying issues - if your design, virtual factory or facility development are not web capable or if you need some huge virtual reality room to make this work invisible, then it's overkill. Your system has to be nimble, web-enabled and light enough - lighter than file size, that is - so that when someone accesses it through the Web, they can see it. The reality today is that you still need paper because some projects are still developed on it, but those days are fading fast.

"Sharing information is a great way that facilities can be optimized for more efficient production," says Andreou. "Technology makes it possible to support and improve a facility's efficient production, not just with its initial construction - but throughout a facility's life."