Digital shop floor for craft business

For more than a hundred years, precast concrete has been produced in Groningen on the Aduarderdiep in Hoogkerk. The architectural concrete facade elements that come out of Hibex's factory in 2022 exceed your wildest dreams. Pure craft and workmanship! This is also what director Michael Hermes desires from all "peripherals. That is why he chose the Elements App from BIM4Production for digitizing the shop floor and maximum quality control.

The facades of the Pontsteiger, Naturalis, Fibonacci and Stepstone on the Zuidas in Amsterdam: it all comes from Hibex's factory. "We play Champions League in concrete construction," Hermes says. "So our motto is 'we make everything but gray.' Of course we produce the occasional interior wall, but we mainly focus on the architectural aspect of the facade. We make a lot of sandwich elements for stacked housing construction. An average product for our factory is a tower 70 meters high on a plot of limited dimensions. We make, as it were, Lego bricks for adults. Ready-made facade elements that are assembled directly from the truck."

One of a kind

There is no rehearsal at Hibex. "Every project is unique. The only certainty we have is that the next project will be different again," Hermes laughs. The production process, on the other hand, does include repetitive operations. Whether you have to pour a round or rectangular mold, there is always reinforcement involved, the quality of the mold must be checked, etc. In view of the upcoming Quality Assurance Act and the ambition to go paperless in the factory, Hermes searched the market for a solution that would support him in this. "Some of our clients already work (partly) digitally, for example with tablets on the construction site, but that software turns out not to be applicable one-to-one in a concrete factory. In this software, the static building forms the basis, while we were looking for a solution in which precisely all loose individual elements are central. But also a solution that we can track not only through the entire plant, but throughout its life cycle."

Element Passport

The solution was found in BIM4Production's Elements App, a solution that has only just been launched. "We were there early," Hermes says. "The app wasn't quite ready. That gave us the opportunity to bring in our knowledge of the process and product to make the app fit our needs as well as possible." Henk Jan Nieuwenhuis of BIM4Production adds: "We build software for the market. So that also means being open to feedback to avoid building theoretical software. We start with an MVP, a 'minimum viable product.' Precisely thanks to the cooperation with the end user, Hibex in this case, we come up with surprising insights and improvements to make the software fit all, sometimes somewhat specific, processes." 

Hibex sees the Elements App as a "passport" in which all (production) data and properties of the element are digitally recorded. "With this we are already ahead of the Quality Assurance Act and offer customers maximum visibility and control of our internal process," Hermes says. "Normally they come and see a number of times during the production process, in theory they can now log into our quality system remotely and determine the quality thanks to all the information and photos."

Secret of the blacksmith

Hibex is currently going through the second and final test phase with the Elements App, also with a very special project: Stepstone in Amsterdam from LEVS architects, Amsterdam. Hibex produces the architectural facade elements, partly in the color gray and partly in the color green. Yes indeed, this green colored surface is also concrete. An effect achieved by adding marble granulate imported from Italy to the concrete mix on the one hand and then working the surface. All other details are "the blacksmith's secret. "The intention is to start all new projects directly in the Elements App starting in 2023," he said.