Furniture Management: It Starts With Good Design!
                       By Jayne Mortensen, Packsaddle Publishing

Series: Part 2 of 4

Furniture has a lot of names these days; freestanding, open plan, private office, systems, cubicles, modular and the most recent…desking systems. When Robert Probst designed systems furniture in 1977 he never intended for it to function in the way that it does today. It was designed quite simply, to achieve two goals: divide space and have flexible configurations. Today it is not only interactive with all building systems and technology, users rely on its vertical storage space, acoustic properties, ergonomic sensitivities and the distribution of electrical and telecommunications cabling. For a few fortunate corporate beta sites new wireless applications are being enjoyed.

In this second part of a four part series on Furniture Management and how to achieve a zero tolerance for errors within it, your love affair has to start with design. To clarify even further, you need to start with "good" design. If you look out at your office floor plan and you can visualize ice cube trays, then you probably have a started a shaky love affair with your furniture designer. Visually appealing outcomes are the final product of good design certainly; however technical applications are where deep love is rooted.

Unless you fancy living in the world of Gestapo space planning, meaning you will work in this space and you will like it! Then attention to space planning can pay off threefold in a successful furniture management plan. Somehow fitting 10 pounds of sugar in a 5 pound bag has never worked, however people keep trying it. Smart designers will keep you from getting sucked into poor choices like these. If you are in tune enough to listen to them then you probably are already utilizing their next suggestion of standardization. A very simple idea that makes owning and living with systems furniture tolerable. Standardization applies furniture to appropriate space, function and aesthetics while at the same time reaching the highest number in user population, narrowing combinations of furniture applications to a manageable number.

Modulation is not a tough math concept to grasp, especially when it applies to furniture. Part of your standardization is to use your math skills and insist that all your panel and work surface sizes modulate. For the math challenged….don't fear. It simply means that you need to determine whether your physical space is best suited for a 5" or 6" modular product. A good start is to measure your column spacing to determine whether 60" desks (5" module) will fit between them better than 72" desks (6"module). Sticking with our analogy of deep love…which ever you choose. Stick with it. Don't date around and mix up modulations. If you do, you will find yourself with a full warehouse of furniture products that you can't use. And the problem will grow on you. If you don't match modulation of panels to desks, then some day you will look up and wonder if the furniture is not mating in the warehouse and producing offspring…still in sizes you can use.

Insist on intelligent documentation. Accurate, updated as-builts of your shell and interior floor plans. Believe it or not that little square that shows up on your furniture floor plan is a file cabinet! What kind of file cabinet? Free standing, two-drawer, five-drawer…and does it come with hanging file rails? Furniture symbol libraries make it possible for that that square or symbol to be understood by your computer's drawing tool and your furniture specifying catalogs. If you have an intelligent drawing you have something to reconcile inventories and purchase orders to. This is not a luxury for the big boys, whether you have one workstation or 10,000 it will start you on a path of knowing what you have, where it is and how it is being use. Furniture Inventory Control is the result which we will address in part three.