Key Takeaways:
Early in the design process, designers can bake in key decisions on flows, adjacencies, distances, material handling methods and other aspects of facility operations. These early design decisions impact operational efficiency for the facility’s lifecycle, so it is critical to get these decisions right and inform these choices as much as possible.
DES can give owners and operators confidence around their choices before capital investment. It lets the design team test solutions digitally before spending millions on equipment or infrastructure or before the team design goes down a suboptimal path. It also can help reduce risks by identifying potential bottlenecks, underperforming scenarios and failure points early, and it can show the way that design and programming can increase productivity.
The software also allows designers to rapidly compare multiple scenarios and outcomes of a design direction instead of debating assumptions.
DES gives designers data so they can more easily create visualizations, dashboards and even animated three-dimensional visualizations to help collaborators in business and operations see the trade-offs, options and building performance under various conditions.
Designers, engineers, operators and owners also can share the DES to ensure alignment on the way a system works. Teams can work from infographics and even animated three-dimensional video of simulated conditions to reach that shared understanding. Together, they can analyze the output and make changes in the system to improve the results.
While DES software is a relatively low-cost addition to the design process, it can have a high impact. A modest investment in the modeling efforts could prevent costly redesigns and operational failures.
The software also enables multidimensional design, which benefits from better information. With DES, users can design for space, time and behavior, not just square footage. Designers and architects are likely to find it worthwhile to spend a relatively small amount of money upfront on event simulation versus paying many times more over the long term to get operations right.
While DES software can benefit the design of a range of commercial and institutional facilities, its benefits also translate to other types of facilities designs and types:
Manufacturing and advanced automation. We are modeling full manufacturing systems to understand the way people, forklifts, automated guide vehicles and machines interact. The design process involves testing the number of machines required in a factory, their speed, loading and unloading times, and their impact on throughput and downtime. Clients then can validate automation investments before implementation.
Battery electric bus charging and transit operations. DES is helping designers simulate electric bus charging schedules and infrastructure. With the software, designers can model complex, dynamic conditions such as shared charging times, arrival times and state of charge-based charging profiles. This process helps the designer and the transit collaborator make informed decisions about charger quantities, site electrical servicing sizing and timing, fleet procurement and revenue service planning.
DES has been beneficial during functional programming for a new transit operations and maintenance facility in Canada. The simulation tested the number of wash racks needed, fueling and cleaning sequences, overnight versus daytime processing of buses, onsite queueing and other options and, as a result, rule out options that looked good on paper but would underperform under real-world conditions.
Logistics yards, warehouses and loading docks. Logistics facilities are increasingly highly automated. Using DES, we have modeled truck arrivals and departures, loading dock strategies, automated storage and retrieval systems, and other operational considerations for logistics facilities. Designers compared multiple operational and infrastructure scenarios using dashboards and visual outputs, allowing operators to toggle between design options in order to see real-time impacts.
DES is not just for buildings, trucks, autonomous vehicles and conveyor belts. Designers can and have applied it to the flow of people in and out of buildings. We recently applied DES to human flows in large, advanced manufacturing facilities, including clean-room manufacturing environments. Think of thousands of employees arriving, going through security and putting on personal protective equipment before starting work while the previous shift is doing the reverse.
Designers modeled the impact of shift changes with thousands of employees crossing paths in locker rooms, corridors, turnstiles and queues, and they used the tool to help teams validate space needs and reduce the risk of congestion in high-stakes operations.
Miguel Villarreal is an industrial engineer in training with Stantec, an engineering, architecture and environmental consulting firm, and works on a range of industrial and infrastructure projects.
DES Software Puts Designs in Motion
How Discrete Event Simulation Improves Facility Design and Efficiency
