On the shopfloor, every meter counts. Targeted route optimization shortens walking time, stabilizes cycle time, and improves ergonomics, overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), and safety. Clearly guided routes in the material flow reduce lead time and avoid sources of error, measurably and noticeably in everyday assembly planning. Walking time can often be reduced significantly without major investment if you collect data cleanly and compare variants consistently.
Typical obstacles are long walking and grasping paths, cross traffic between picking, milk run, and assembly, search times caused by unclear material supply, and bottlenecks with poor visibility. With a simple spaghetti diagram and clear metrics, you spot the hotspots quickly. Planning in VR with Halocline makes these weak points walkable, shows distances realistically, and speeds up well-founded decisions. However, it does not replace pilot tests, approvals by environment, health, and safety (EHS), or REFA time studies.
Walking time is made up of walking, searching, and grasping times and feeds directly into cycle time. Route length measures the meters covered per order or shift and makes waste in the material flow visible. Typical causes are:
Patterns like these throw the cycle off, increase the risk of accidents, and put strain on teams.
A lean set of metrics lets you steer this:
Set a baseline with date, product mix, and shift, define measurement frequency and responsibilities, and use observation, REFA methods, and digital measurements to assess changes objectively.
U-layout: A line is converted to a U-layout. Route length per shift drops from 480 to 340 m, walking time by 22 percent, and the FTT rate rises by two percentage points.
Scheduled milk run: In logistics, a milk run on a fixed schedule reduces cross traffic at the line from 14 to 6 trips per hour. Waiting times caused by congestion drop by eight minutes per shift, and lead time falls by nine percent.
The spaghetti diagram quickly creates clarity. You trace the real walking and driving routes on the layout or run through the workflows in VR and record them. Clusters and loops become visible, and you derive shorter grasping paths, relocated picking locations, or one-sided delivery.
For the shopfloor layout, U, L, and Z layouts have different strengths. A U-layout shortens walking routes and makes material delivery from outside easier. L and Z layouts help with structural constraints and separate inflow and outflow. Supermarket, milk run, and kanban smooth the material flow, while picking zones, pick-by-light, 5S, and clean workstation design reduce mispicks and search times. What matters is that everything fits product dimensions, takt, and variant mix.
Roles should be clearly linked: industrial engineering leads the method and metrics, lean moderates the standards, logistics is responsible for material flow and the milk run, EHS assesses safety and ergonomics, and those responsible for assembly ensure practicality. The basis is layouts, bills of materials, cycle times, frequencies, walking time measurements, and the 3D model as a shared data set.
Halocline is the planning platform for production layouts and workstations. You build walkable 3D models with no training required and without CAD data, experience shopfloor layouts with realistic distances, check lines of sight, and spot collisions before anything is moved. You create variants as copies, name them, and compare them. This makes decisions faster, more traceable, and easy to connect across departments. The limits remain deliberate: VR speeds up checking but does not replace real-world trials, EHS approval, or REFA time studies.
In practice, you set up the current hall layout as a template or rebuild it from library elements. You mark the driving routes and stops of milk runs and forklifts with library elements and measure distances with the measuring tool. If you walk the routes in VR and record them, the spaghetti diagram shows the paths, and the recording provides route lengths and walking times. Grasping area avatars and the ergonomics analysis based on the key indicator method check grip heights and postures. With Halocline Cloud, the team works on a shared data set. Together with observed times and REFA data, this creates a reliable basis for comparing variants fairly and making risks transparent.
Schmitz Cargobull shows what this looks like in practice: the team scanned existing hall areas, rebuilt the as-is state in Halocline, and checked layout variants in VR. Routes were widened, equipment was repositioned, and stakeholders from industrial engineering, production, and management gave feedback directly in VR.
Assembly island: An assembly island becomes a U-layout with an adjacent supermarket. Route length drops from 420 to 310 m, walking time by 18 percent, and cross traffic from nine to five trips per hour. Cycle time stays stable despite more variants, and FTT rises by three percentage points.
Cross traffic: There is heavy cross traffic between picking and assembly. Newly planned milk run routes with side delivery reduce crossings from twelve to five per hour, congestion time per shift by six minutes, and lead time by eight percent.
Ergonomics: Grip heights move into the comfort range. The share of grasps above 1,400 mm drops by 70 percent, bending decreases by 55 percent, cycle time fluctuates less, and quality deviations with small parts become rarer.
For a clean presentation, put the before and after metrics side by side on one page, add spaghetti diagrams, and record assumptions, remaining effort, and planned pilot tests. Standardized workstations, defined routes, and a clearly documented shopfloor layout secure the effect, while regular audits and metric reviews prevent relapses.
Want to check the routes on your shopfloor 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.
