Framework for increasing sustainability of factory systems by generative layout design
Marian Süße, Steffen Ihlenfeldt, Matthias Pütz
Abstract
The structure of factory systems has a long-term impact on the productivity and performance of production systems. With an increasing relevance of decentral renewable energy sources, factory planning becomes more complex due to an increase of decision criteria and possible solutions, but ecological impacts are also growingly depending on early structure decisions. However, decisions during planning processes in industry are still based on experience, qualitative assessments and discussions. Thus, planning results may not exploit the potential of the available solution space, nor do they allow quantitative traceability of layout configurations. Generative Design (GD) gained popularity in topology optimization and building construction and provides promising opportunities for complex design tasks. Not least with the increasing relevance of Building Information Modeling (BIM) in manufacturing, new methods and technologies for optimization become available to factory planners. Hence, the paper describes options for enhanced decisions in sustainable factory layout planning. Therefore, it provides a quick overview on optimization and GD in layout planning as well as the relation towards BIM and sustainability assessment. Based on this, possible extensions of optimization targets and boundaries towards energy and sustainability-related criteria is elaborated. Afterwards, necessary and potential data acquisition with the openBIM-related Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) is discussed. The paper concludes with an outlook towards further investigations on the overlap of layout design, BIM and sustainability.