Producing over 50 homes a day via a digital, efficient and automated smart factory production system

Leveraging a scalable, industrial approach to housing

Traditionally, homes are built by hand with tools on site; however, ADMARES is redefining home building by creating the world’s first fully digitalized, industrialized and productized approach to manufacturing entire buildings in a factory.

Founded in 2016 in Turku, Finland by Mikael Hedberg, ADMARES’ roots lie in modular building methods for shipbuilding and offshore industries. Even in its early projects, the company applied a distinctive approach: fully prefabricating hotel rooms and modular units in the factory, including all technical systems, and installing them on site, ready for immediate use. This sets ADMARES apart from conventional prefab housing that typically produce components off site and assemble and finish them on location.

Shifting the entire home building process to the factory relies on industrial automation, digital planning and modular series production. The construction site becomes a delivery address, and building processes a production line, allowing buildings to leave production ready for occupancy. Thus, homeownership becomes an industrially plannable reality as well as economically viable, climate-conscious and accessible to more people.

Building homes like cars

Drawing from experience, ADMARES began rethinking the concept of home building, aiming to scale construction using industrial principles. One thought leading the company was: What if they could produce homes like cars, with defined processes, automated steps and technologies proven in manufacturing environments?

This idea led to a strategic partnership with Porsche Consulting, MHP – A Porsche Company, EDAG Group and Siemens Digital Industries Software. Together, they are developing a fully digital and automated production system for manufacturing residential buildings. As a foundation, they created a smart factory concept spanning nearly 310,000 square meters that is designed to simulate and optimize every production step before building the first unit. Simulation plays a key role here, especially in balancing cycle times, logistics and layout decisions.

Benefiting from the Siemens Industrial Metaverse

To provide the digital foundation for production planning, ADMARES leverages a coordinated software toolset drawn from the Siemens Industrial Metaverse. All systems are connected and support the entire workflow, from initial product idea through planning to production.

Namely, ADMARES uses NX™ software for 3D design and Teamcenter® software for product lifecycle management (PLM), which brings together product data and manufacturing information for other applications to employ.

For virtual factory planning, ADMARES leverages Plant Simulation in the Tecnomatix® portfolio, supported by Process Simulate in the Tecnomatix portfolio, Line Designer and other tools for process and layout planning. Additionally, the company uses the Polarion™ portfolio to manage requirements and testing, Opcenter™ software to control production operations and the SIMATIC® suite for machine automation. NX, Teamcenter, Tecnomatix, Polarion, Opcenter and SIMATIC are part of the Siemens Xcelerator business platform of software, hardware and services.

With this integrated environment of systems, ADMARES can simulate complex processes earlier, evaluate them and align setup for scalable production.

Achieving efficiency before starting production

With Plant Simulation, ADMARES validates its technical concepts long before installing the first machine. Using simulation reveals how stable the processes are; whether cycle times are realistic and to what extent they can automate workflows, as well as aligning production speed and scalability. Additionally, the company can virtually test various layout and process scenarios and evaluate them in terms of feasibility and investment needs.

This leads to well-informed decisions about factory setup, reducing ramp-up times and integrating new products quicker. Moreover, the company can identify and address bottlenecks during the planning phase, not during operation, resulting in a more predictable, robust production system that is easier to adapt.

“Using Plant Simulation allowed us to accurately model high levels of manufacturing depth across more than 20 interconnected production areas and provided full transparency on key performance indicators,” says Marvin Plueschke, project lead at EDAG Group.

Transferring automotive expertise to construction

ADMARES applies industrial principles to home building, aiming to establish a production model that they can digitally plan, manufacture in series and scale economically while aligning quality and cost.

Thanks to the partnership between MHP – A Porsche Company and ADMARES, they developed an information technology (IT) architecture that covers factory planning and the operational phase. By integrating Plant Simulation, they could simulate variants and embed them directly into the system’s architecture, laying the foundation for a scalable, repeatable and fully digital production model.

“Leveraging Plant Simulation supports fact-based planning and secures major investment decisions with reliable, real-world data,” says Mikael Hedberg, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) at ADMARES.

Shifting from simulation to real-world execution

With implantation in mind, ADMARES needed to go from digitalized simulations to concrete layouts, workflows and systems.

One major advantage was the project’s starting point. Since the new smart factory is a greenfield development with no existing infrastructure to adapt, it was possible to integrate digital tools like Plant Simulation directly without compromise.

By applying the Siemens Industrial Metaverse across multiple areas, ADMARES was able to visualize plans, analyze technical details, coordinate between teams and prepare for training sessions. Since all tools accessed the same simulation and planning data, the digital factory became a connecting layer between the planning and execution phases, resulting in a robust concept built on consistently applying Siemens technology.

Using simulation as a planning tool

The ADMARES production system consists of numerous interrelated areas, each with its own complexity. To manage this structure, the planning team turned to Plant Simulation early in the development phase. Leveraging the software’s objectoriented modeling structure, the company created and refined individual sections separately, step-by-step. Thus, teams could work in parallel, feeding results back into the process, evolving the model continually and providing a basis for decision making.

By integrating Plant Simulation, ADMARES gained insights into material flow, capacity, buffer sizes and cycle times, allowing them to precisely evaluate modified workflows or additional production lines. The company used the simulation to assess economic scenarios and validate investment decisions.

“Systematic cost optimization led to a 30 percent reduction in the initial investment framework, while at the same time improving the level of automation required to reach the planned productivity,” says Plueschke. “Simulating with Plant Simulation helped validate system availability of over 85 percent.”

ADMARES also used the generated data to form the foundation for visualization within the Siemens Industrial Metaverse. The graphical output supported communication across the project and made complex processes easier to understand, even for stakeholders without a technical background.

Going from sub-models to a unified system

Using Plant Simulation allows ADMARES to develop complex production models gradually and modularly. The company first modeled, tested and refined individual areas of the factory. Working in parallel, teams then moved forward independently while aligning with the overall system. Later, they brought the sub-models together into a fully integrated factory model. The resulting model now forms the basis for the production setup, which ADMARES can extend in future stages, for example, as part of a digital twin environment.

Leveraging connected tools for end-to-end planning

At ADMARES, the full potential of Plant Simulation becomes clear when combining it with other Siemens Xcelerator solutions. At the core is Teamcenter, serving as the central data platform. This solution brings together product information and planning data and, by using Teamcenter Manufacturing software, the company can link it with manufacturing data. The simulation model accesses this consistent data structure directly and can automatically reflect changes or product variants.

With NX, its add-ons and Teamcenter, ADMARES can connect product design directly with factory production planning. It can manage all data in a single source of information within Teamcenter, which also feeds into the production simulation. Using NX with its specialized add-ons, ADMARES can design the entire building product as one integrated system within the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio. This approach enables continual product optimization in series production, something not achievable in traditional, one-off construction projects.

Using Opcenter forms the connection to operational control. Additionally, the production processes ADMARES maps in Opcenter serve as the foundation for execution, which SIMATIC systems for machine-level automation supports. Plant Simulation fits seamlessly into this architecture, bridging the gap between virtual planning and real-world implementation.

Making faster decisions and implementing smarter

At ADMARES, simulation is used not only for planning, but also for evaluating process alternatives. The company can realistically model new product concepts, adjust cycle times or modify line setups, enabling confident decision making before beginning physical construction and providing a solid basis for investment.

They can also test future adjustments with precision and evaluate changes to layouts, material flows or process sequences digitally. This shortens decision cycles and strengthens the overall planning process. Overall, with a maximum capacity of about 16,320 smart homes per year, ADMARES can produce over 50 homes per day.

Building the future using the metaverse

In designing their smart factory, ADMARES demonstrated the potential and benefits of embedding digital planning from the beginning. Thanks to leveraging the Siemens Industrial Metaverse and Siemens Xcelerator solutions, the company can test, compare and refine scenarios with precision.

Even when conditions change, the system remains robust. Whether entering new markets, introducing product variants or adapting process flows, using a digital model enables early planning, validation and risk mitigation.

The approach ADMARES took shows how industrial standards and digital tools can transfer to an entirely new domain. Those who invest early in structured, digital workflows gain planning certainty, scalability and a path to new business models.