Creating competitive factories - Speeding up the innovative process in factory design using virtual reality as a new engineering tool

This paper presents the participative approach in factory design and describes the system developed at the Fraunhofer-Institute for Factory Operation and Automation to support the factory planning and facility management process. When designing a new factory or revitalising old factory buildings important decisions have to be taken in an early stage of the planning process. The developed Model-Shop helps to speed up the planning process by supplying the owner, architect, process planner, construction planner and suppliers a common framework/environment for their decision-making process. Using Virtual Reality the interdisciplinary planning team can walk through the factory actively and discuss current planning options to achieve a higher quality level of decision in much shorter time.