Before the bottleneck: Using Design Research to model operations and optimize facility planning

Organizations managing complex manufacturing and process environments face mounting pressures: evolving production requirements, multimodal operations, limited staffing, and competitive timelines. Presenters demonstrate the application of Design Research modeling to reveal operational bottlenecks, workflow conflicts, and misaligned assumptions before equipment arrives or construction begins. This cross-disciplinary panel demonstrates how process mapping translates into smarter space planning—improving adjacencies, identifying layout inefficiencies, and supporting scalable facility design. They guide attendees through interactive polling on simplified modeling scenarios, comparing audience assessments with real-world outcomes. They share challenges they have navigated around assumptions, strategies they have used to convert insights into design decisions, and using modeling to support long-term flexibility. They illustrate how structured analysis informs decisions across planning, design, and operations—transforming abstract data into actionable facility improvements.