For a modern industry, Building Information Modelling (BIM) has revolutionized the development and delivery of projects. While it is typically used in the construction and design sectors for the computer modelling of buildings, BIM is making the move across different sectors, reaping the same positive results.
In a case study from the World Architecture News, Kalzip, one of the world’s largest steel manufacturers, explains how its use of BIM technologies is changing the way in its business is run, potentially opening the door for BIM users in a number of different sectors.
In terms of its effects on the company, the 3D modeling tool has allowed for greater communication and collaboration between clients and the manufacturer, offering clients with real-time data.
BIM is also boosting workplace efficiency on a number of levels. Projects can be tested and possible issues can be ironed out through performance assessments at different stages of design. Perhaps most notably, the case study says, different components of a product, including “all acoustic performance properties, U-values, structural performances, extreme weather performances, thermal expansion properties (and) fire properties,” can be assessed for their capabilities even before they are manufactured. This is a new concept in the industry and helps save time and money while boosting overall productivity levels.
This kind of testing also includes the adoption of adaptive practices, where a product can be changed slightly to meet the client’s or designer’s new set of need or wants which can be better determined through virtual testing.
The elimination of error is the key behind BIM’s successful implementation in the manufacturing sector. Models can go directly from their virtual 3D form into the pattern drawings fed into the manufacturing machines, which in turn produce the products exactly to specification, eliminating error – human or otherwise.
This tool can be an efficiency maximiser in virtually any industry. Given the results that BIM has achieved in the construction and design sector, it would seem only logical that it would also find success in the smaller product development industry of manufacturing.
