In a greenfield project, you set paths, cycle times, and costs for many years to come. You plan without legacy constraints, but you have to work with many assumptions, and every late change costs time and budget. If you proceed in a structured way from the start and check variants in a walkable model, risk goes down and the new build becomes more predictable. With Halocline, a sketch turns into a 3D layout that you walk through at 1:1 scale before anything is ordered or built.
A greenfield project gives you freedom for value stream, material flow, and ergonomics. You lay out flows in one direction, plan reserves in modules, and size the hall for growth instead of compromises. A brownfield project can save investment and time, but it ties you to existing grids and routes that often work against cycle stability and safety. In a greenfield project, what counts is testing assumptions early instead of casting them in concrete.
A clear sequence helps: from requirements analysis through block layout, hall sizing, and infrastructure to work systems, ergonomics, safety, and ramp-up. For example, plan main traffic routes about 4.0 m wide for two-way traffic of forklifts and automated guided vehicles (AGV), and secondary routes about 2.5 m wide. Lay out a load-bearing column grid, crane runways, and utility islands so that future lines can be duplicated. You check escape routes, lines of sight, and handover points in the walkable model before you place orders.
The expensive ones are mainly untested assumptions about volumes, cycle times, and variant mix, utility and fire protection planning that starts too late, and layouts without a logistics and ergonomics check. The consequences are oversized areas, intersections with collision risk, and unstable cycles during ramp-up. If you check the layout in Halocline at 1:1 scale, such gaps come to light before procurement and construction trigger costs you can't recover.
Start with the must-have data and cover unknowns with scenarios. Capture annual volumes, variant mix, and seasonality as a range, for example plus/minus 20 percent. You derive the takt time from daily demand: with 25,200 seconds of net production time and 600 units, the takt is 42 seconds. Define ramp-up curves over 6, 12, and 24 months so that capacity and floor space grow in step.
In material flow, you compare milk runs and AGVs based on frequencies, payloads, route lengths, and stop times. Define handover points, loading and waiting areas, and size buffers based on variation and takt, for example 10 to 20 minutes of decoupling at critical steps. Simple rules such as Little's Law (inventory = throughput × lead time) help with the estimate. You then check the effect on floor space and routes in the walkable model.
A transparent set of criteria helps you compare variants:
Also test sensitivities, such as 15 percent more volume. This lets you explain trade-offs clearly and decide based on numbers rather than gut feeling.
Use the same grid for every variant: walking times between assembly, quality, and shipping, number of intersections, lines of sight at handovers, ergonomics for the 5th to 95th percentile, and capital and operating expenditure (capex/opex) per functional block. Write down your hypotheses and document the decision with date, assumptions, and screenshots from the model.
Halocline is the planning platform for production layouts and workstations. You plan in 3D, with no training required. You do the rough planning on the desktop: you import existing data such as DWG layouts or CAD models, drag machines, racks, and infrastructure from the library into the top view, and create variants. Detailed planning and checking follow in VR. This way you build the virtual replica of the new plant step by step, from rough to detailed, and share the results as walkable reviews.
Two new-build projects show what this looks like in practice. For its new building at its Pforzheim headquarters, Witzenmann planned, validated, and optimized a 23,700 m² factory with 745 machines in Halocline, with a more compact production footprint at the same capacity. Rawie planned its new headquarters with 4,800 m² of production space in Halocline. Managing Director Markus Gehle: "It used to take us several days to evaluate a new layout – with Halocline we now create several variants in less than an hour and make decisions immediately."
Ergonomics: Grasping area avatars show grasping areas and working planes for the body heights you set, so you can check from the 5th to the 95th percentile. As a guide, grip heights of about 750 to 1,200 mm and horizontal reaches of up to about 450 mm apply to frequent tasks. You try out aids such as lift tables or gripping aids without building a physical mock-up. If you record a workflow in VR, the ergonomics analysis based on the key indicator method shows which object movements are problematic.
Routes and handovers: You record walking routes and analyze them in the spaghetti diagram. You walk forklift and AGV routes, lines of sight, and signals at handover points in the model. Collisions become visible early, and you place markings and barriers where they are needed. You open variants A, B, and C one after another, walk through them as a team, and record decisions with labels in the model.
Block layout: The starting point is three block layout variants for a new plant. The walkable comparison reveals two bottlenecks and three spots where forklifts and AGVs get in each other's way. With defused intersections, routes become around 12 percent shorter.
Workstation: At one station, grip heights and reaches don't fit. If you correct them in the model before the start of production (SOP), you avoid a later rebuild that would otherwise cost around €15,000.
Material flow: You compare supply by milk run with eight trips per hour against AGVs with three trips per hour. With the right solution, buffer requirements drop by around 20 percent, and the total cost of ownership (TCO) can be estimated.
The result is a recommendation with clearly named risks and measures, and a model that everyone involved has walked through.
Want to check your new factory before it's built? Get started for free with Halocline Free and build your first workstation in 3D. For process analysis and the ergonomics check, get in touch and we'll show you the right scope.
