For giant manufacturers, such as Germany-based Schaeffler Group with nearly 100 factories worldwide, 10 in the U.S., streamlining production of precision industrial components is paramount. When it began to digitize its operations in 2016 to get more real-time data from the shop floor, Schaeffler realized that it wasn't enough to digitize the manufacturing processes, inventory, workforce, and logistics; it also had to digitize the physical manufacturing environment itself.

Its efforts to 3D scan each facility and create full-color lifelike digital twins, has, so far, resulted in significant time and cost savings. "Project lead times for data capture are up to 80% shorter compared to traditional methods," says Roberto Henkel, Schaeffler's senior VP of digitalization and operations IT. The full-color digital twins of its factories enables "far more efficient communication and planning among departments and third-party vendors."

As the company accelerates its factory relocation to shorten supply chains and move production closer to customers, accurate factory digital twins have played a key role and also delivered some unexpected benefits.

But what exactly does it take to accurately digitize an entire physical factory?

Most of today's virtual environments, such as real estate virtual tours or Google Street Views, are still photos digitally stitched together. Software algorithms see where the multiple photos overlap and generate a 3D environment.

Although this technology is suitable for visual representations, it doesn't have the accuracy and speed required for a functioning digital twin of a factory. For this, companies turn to laser 3D scanning, specifically LiDAR (light detection and ranging) coupled with high-resolution imagery and tech called simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), which enables real-time mapping of indoor spaces, even in areas without GPS signals.

This technology has been around for decades. However, with traditional tripod-mounted scanners, it can take months to a year to scan an engine factory.

Newer and wearable mobile laser scanning technology uses algorithms and cloud-based processing to capture data at the speed of walking.

One technology scale-up from Germany called NavVis created a wearable 3D scanner, the NavVis VLX, to record indoor environments in 360º and render them on its digital twin platform called NavVis Ivion. NavVis' tech is used across industries, including construction, manufacturing, and real estate, to create high-resolution digital models of complex indoor spaces.

Schaeffler adopted the NavVis technology in 2020 and Henkel says it takes less than a week to scan a 500,000 square foot factory. The company currently has more than 16 million square feet scanned producing "digital twins" of 48 of its factories.

Highly accurate, full-color, virtual digital twins help Henkel and his team address a lot of questions that dramatically shortens the time of a relocation project. "For example, when you move product lines and whole value streams from one location to the other, which is daily business for us as we continuously optimize our production footprint," he says, "you have to know which equipment will arrive, what condition is it in, and is there anything to be changed in the new location", among many other things.

The NavVis VLX wearable 3D scanner, or mobile mapping device, captures data on the factory environment and all of its equipment down to every door knob and light switch. For companies just ramping up with digital capture, NavVis also offers a reality capture service.

Handheld 3D scanners from Leica, Faro, and Kaarta also have LiDAR and SLAM but aren't wearable, while solutions from scanner makers Faro and Trimble require a tripod base. One of the only other wearable 360º scanning tech comes from California-based GreenValley International. Its LiBackpack, is primarily designed for outdoor environments, such as forests, construction sites, and large-scale land surveying.

However, scanning is only part of the solution. The NavVis Ivion platform enabled Henkel to tag and annotate environments, log which equipment is where, measure spaces exactly, and extract pieces of environments to paste into new factory plans.

After Schaeffler had a couple of factories scanned, Henkel discovered new uses and insights from the data. At first the NavVis platform was only accessible to workers directly related to factory planning, but once Schaeffler opened up the data to more departments, it became essential for workers in maintenance planning and third-party vendors who, for example, come in to install electrical infrastructure or even paint the walls.

"It's very easy to give them access to the novice platform and talk with them live in the virtual environment to show them what the area of production will look like and where they have to do their job," says Henkel, "They don't have to come to the factory repedily to understand what the issue is."

Schaeffler can integrate data from its other IT platforms and manufacturing execution system (MES) to develop virtual shop floor management.

"We are working on cases where we can bring in live data from our MES for first shop floor rounds or for discussing potential bottlenecks in machines," says Henkel. "Once we opened the platform to a broader range to different roles, it was quite impressive to see how many ideas came up for different users."

Relocating production, whether it's onshoring or nearshoring, to gain better control over supply chains is at a near all time high. A 2023 study of U.S. manufacturing executives by Forbes, Xometry and Zogby found that "82 percent of executives polled said they'd either moved overseas factories back home or were in the process of doing so."

For Schaeffler's global factories, however, the focus is on localizing and consolidating more operations into one location closer to the customer, to cut down on shipping, logistics, storage, and CO2 footprint.

"Relocation is definitely an important topic for us," says Henkel. "We produce components in one plant, ship them to a second plant to add functionality, and then send the sub-assembly to a third and a fourth plant." Transporting components around the world is not only challenging in terms of sustainability, but also a cost factor, he adds.

Schaeffler's factory digital twins help in the decision making about where the company can eke out a few more square meters to incorporate another production line or which facility is not making the most of its space.

"This functionality helps us to make faster decisions and to create more decision options," says Henkel.

Schaeffler and NavVis have bigger aspirations for factory digital twins and are collaborating on product developments.

"If you combine the digital twin with AI, for example, that could detect and extract from the scans, your real physical assets and then interconnect these assets with our 3D factory planning," says Henkel.

Beyond that, you could have an interactive digital twin that simulates factory processes in real time, but the technology isn't quite there yet.

"This is what we are working on, not only with NavVis, but also with partners like Nvidia, because this is something where you need a lot of specific and highly innovative technologies in combination," says Henkel. "We see ourselves as an innovator in this area driving this in the context of the industrial Metaverse."