Design Guideline for Flexible Industrial Buildings Integrating Industry 4.0 Parameters

Abstract

The emergence of Industry 4.0 can contribute to sustainable development, but most concepts have not yet received much attention in industrial building design. Industry 4.0 aims to realize production in batch size of one and product individualization on demand. Constant reconfiguration and expansion of production systems demand highly flexible building structures to prolong service life and reduce economic and environmental impacts. However, most research and tools focus on either production system or building optimization. There is a lack of holistic approaches that combine these two aspects. This paper presents a systematic design guideline for flexible industrial buildings towards the requirements of Industry 4.0, integrating building and production planning. The methodology employs literature research and a multiple case study based on expert interviews. The design guideline is presented in the form of a categorized parameter catalogue that classifies the results, on the one hand, into the levels of (O) objectives, (T) technical parameters and (P) planning process, and on the other hand, into (S) success factors, (I) suggestions for improvement and (D) deficits. The findings identify flexibility, structural design parameters and an integrated computational design approach at early design stage as potential success factors for integrated industrial building design (IIBD). The results set the basis to develop a multi-objective optimization and decision-making support tool for IIBD in future research.

Parametric Optimization and Decision Support Model Framework for Life Cycle Cost Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment of Flexible Industrial Building Structures Integrating Production Planning

“…In order to extend the life cycle of industrial buildings, building structures must be able to adapt to reconfiguring and expanding production processes, which is a challenge for structural design. Optimizing the load-bearing structure for flexibility and coupling of production planning models already in the early design stage can contribute to increase the economic and environmental sustainability of industrial buildings [7,8]. Nonetheless, often, structural design decisions enter the industrial building design process late and are subservient to architectural and production goals.…”

“…The limited amount of research on flexibility in industrial buildings addresses the adaptive re-use of office and industrial buildings for residential purposes [27] and the flexible design of food processing [28] and biopharma facilities [29], or presents design guidance to support flexibility within architectural and engineering systems of factories [12]. Another study defines a categorized parameter catalogue as a design guideline for flexible industrial buildings that integrates production planning parameters [8]. However, the research conducted by Marjaba and Chidiac [30] has shown that there are no consistent metrics for evaluating the resilience and hence flexibility of industrial buildings in combination with sustainability.…”

“…In previous research, the authors have already presented a parametric design process for structural optimization and flexibility assessment of industrial building structures [36] as well as a parametric framework for automated generation and optimization of production layout scenarios with the potential to be integrated in the parametric structural design process [37]. The research presented in this paper builds on the results of the research conducted in [8,36,37] and couples the models into the POD model framework for flexible andsustainable integrated industrial building design.…”

BIMFlexi-VR: A Virtual Reality Framework for Early-Stage Collaboration in Flexible Industrial Building Design

“…In the research project BIMFlexi, a framework for integrated design of flexible industrial buildings is developed. In the context of the project, flexibility is defined as "the ability of the building structure to resist and adapt to changes in use through changing manufacturing conditions" (Reisinger et al, 2021a). Following this definition, the BIMFlexi design approach aims to create industrial building design solutions that can accommodate a variety of prioritized production plans.…”

“…Following this definition, the BIMFlexi design approach aims to create industrial building design solutions that can accommodate a variety of prioritized production plans. To achieve this goal, two major underlying problems in integrated industrial building design (Reisinger et al, 2021a) are addressed-1) lack of interoperability between discipline-specific tools and 2) poor communication workflows in the early design stage.…”