Task
For almost four decades, Elabo has been a leading provider of specialist technical workstation systems for electrical engineering and electronics. The company designs, manufactures and installs these systems, and trains workers on how to use them.
Part of the company’s vision for future innovation is to become a provider of digital factory solutions. Ahead of an expansion of their own manufacturing and training facilities, the company decided to design and plan the new facilities in a digital model, with the aim of not only creating a digital twin of the factory but also eventually providing their customers with a similar service.
Challenge
Due to increased demand for its products, Elabo decided to expand its manufacturing facilities. The total space after the expansion will be 14,000 square meters. To expand production, new machines needed to be added to increase operations and existing machines needed to be relocated. The company wanted to use a digital factory solution to improve the factory planning process.
Designing, planning and testing in a virtual environment generally has many proven benefits. Firstly, it can provide significant cost and time savings that result from reduced international travel to overseas facilities. Secondly, capturing as-is conditions to create a digital twin helps to avoid costly delays caused by out-of-date documentation during the planning phase.
But implementing this change can be a daunting task – it requires up-to-date information, a digital model and teaching employees how to use it. Moreover, especially in factory planning, a highly detailed model is required that shows all of the equipment.
Perhaps the biggest challenge in taking factories digital is how to even get started. Digital models offer many benefits and a potential solution but usually involve advanced knowledge, access to CAD software and a lot of modeling work. Elabo wanted something that they could use themselves but also offer their customers as a service in future.
Solution
Elabo chose the NavVis IndoorViewer and IPO.log software integration as a combined digital factory solution for their expansion. The solution covers everything from scanning, to visualization and simulation. Importantly, it also overcomes a key barrier for many manufacturing customers when considering the implementation of a digital model: efficiently capturing the as-is factory data needed to develop a digital twin with minimum disruption to production.
