Factory, layout, and hall planning is often done under time pressure. You need to set up a new assembly cell or rebuild an existing line, and cycle time, quality, ergonomics, and material flow all have to fit together. The most important lever is a cell layout that reflects real grasping areas, safe distances, and reliable routes before the rebuild. In VR, you check variants early, even without CAD data, and decide before costs arise.
This pays off twice: you see early whether routes cross or bottlenecks form, and you get measurements for routes, space requirements, and ergonomics. This way you avoid late changes on the shopfloor and the expensive rebuilds that come with them.
U-shaped, L-shaped, line, or island layout: the form determines walking routes, buffer logic, and flexibility.
One-piece flow cuts across these forms: it reduces inventory and lead time, but requires robust, balanced stations and few disruptions.
The key influencing factors are cycle time and workload distribution, variant diversity and changeover strategy, and material flow with supermarket, milk run, and kanban. A stable cycle needs a clear division of stations and reliable times, for example from MTM (Methods-Time Measurement) or REFA. High variance requires unambiguous material presentation within the grasping area and flexible fixtures. Material flow benefits when container sizes, milk run intervals, and handover points fit together and routes stay as free of intersections as possible.
Ergonomics and safety come on top: grip heights between hip and shoulder, few turning movements, and defined protected and traffic areas prevent overload and collisions. DIN 33402 helps with body dimensions, DIN EN ISO 6385 with work design. The interfaces to IT and logistics are part of the picture too: SAP or MES, bills of materials, and replenishment logic. Otherwise the layout fails because data flows are missing.
As a rule of thumb for the decision:
Start pragmatically: build the cell to scale from library elements and replicate the hall so that reference points and traffic routes are correct. You don't need CAD data for this. A hall plan as a 2D template, a scan as a point cloud, or dimensions from a hand sketch are enough to get to a testable geometry quickly. Halocline is the planning platform for production layouts and workstations: you switch between desktop and VR, position tables, racks, machines, and zones, and set up grasping areas and safety distances from the start, with no training required.
Once the geometry is in place, the cycle and workload distribution follows. Break the work down into elements with times from MTM or REFA and distribute them across the stations so that each one is close to the cycle time. If you run through the workflows in VR and record them, you see where things get stuck, redistribute work content, and try other sequences to avoid hand changes. If needed, you transfer recorded processes into an MTM analysis with the MTMmotion export.
In parallel, you align material presentation with consumption: A parts in the optimal grasping area, B and C parts within reach, buffers based on consumption per cycle and milk run interval. Supermarket, kanban signals, and handover points have to fit together so that the flow stays stable.
You check the routing with the spaghetti diagram directly in the model. You record walking routes in VR, see intersections, and measure the distances per run, which you extrapolate to the shift. If you also run through a one-piece flow without intermediate buffers, you can tell whether the flow is robust or needs targeted buffers at bottlenecks.
For ergonomics, you use grasping area avatars whose grasping areas and working planes are calculated according to DIN 33402-2 and DIN EN ISO 14738 for the body height you set. You adjust shelves and angles and reduce overhead grasps and turns. In recorded workflows, the ergonomics analysis based on the key indicator method shows which object movements are problematic.
U-cell instead of a line: The starting point is an assembly with a 45-second cycle. Switching to a U-cell reduces the walking distance from 4,200 to 2,950 m per shift, the number of intersections halves from six to three, and overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) rises by around 2 percentage points.
Rebuild in an existing facility: Walking through the model reveals that an escape route falls below its minimum width and two milk run routes cross. A relocated rack and a milk run interval shifted by five minutes resolve both bottlenecks. Instead of 25 percent changes after construction starts, only 8 percent are to be expected.
Ergonomics review: 22 percent of grasps are overhead grasps or turns of up to 90 degrees. With adjusted grip heights and a rotating fixture, the share drops to 5 percent, the internal ergonomics score rises from 72 to 86 out of 100, and the scrap rate falls by 0.4 percentage points.
Sanner shows that this pays off in reality too: together with item and Halocline, assembly workstations for a medical technology product were tested and optimized in VR before being built. The result: up to 20% shorter process time and project time shortened by one week. At Siemens in Karlsruhe, workstation design with Halocline became 4x faster.
In joint reviews, assembly, logistics, occupational safety (HSE), and IT look at the same space. You record notes with labels directly in the model. Short loops and a clear approval status with screenshots, dimensions, and the material list noticeably reduce rework. Halocline supports you with fast modeling from the library, switching between desktop and VR, and exports for production planning, logistics, and the shopfloor, for example as PDF, STEP, or material list.
A lean set of metrics creates transparency:
Which target values make sense depends on the context. What matters is a clean before-and-after comparison with documented routes, screenshots, and dimensions from the model.
Clear rules help with approval, such as a minimum value in the ergonomics assessment, an upper limit for walking distance per shift, no safety violations, and a documented material flow without uncontrolled crossings. If a criterion is not met, the review in the model shows you where to readjust. You store proven solutions as your own standards in the library, and the next cell is planned faster.
Want to check your next cell before you rebuild? 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.
