Can a better office environment result in happier employees and higher productivity?

It's early morning and Mr. Kim has just arrived at work. This is a time when he likes to sit back and ponder over what to do today. He is very comfortable with his company's new office environment. In particular, he thinks his integrated desk and partition perfectly meet his taste, and he can become absorbed in his work without being bothered by others. A push of a button turns on the personal computer on his desk and a drawer with the keyboard slides out in front of him. All the cords, wires and phone lines are hidden in the floor and partitions so he no longer trips over them like he used to. He doesn't need to meet with his bosses too frequently because of an electronic approval system that has been implemented, and he only has to reach over and grab documents after printing. The lighting is somewhat subdued, but that's the way Mr. Kim likes it, and he's ready to dive into his work and start the day. In his pondering, though, he recalls watching a cartoon as a kid and wondering now how his office compares to George Jetson's.

Mr. Kim may not work for Spacely Sprockets, but the intelligent office is becoming a more common sight these days, equipped with office automation equipment and ergonomic furniture the design of which has become a science in the true sense of the word--designed to improve efficiency and productivity.

Korea is a relative newcomer to this science, however. In fact office furniture was not even in common use in Korea until the 1960s. At that time, Korea's manufacturing industry was at a fledgling stage, involved primarily in the manufacture of items like soap and shoes. Only a small number of white-collar employees were even working in an office and the furniture they used was most likely U.S. Army surplus.

The scene would change soon, though. The rapid industrialization and development of the national economy starting in the 1970s was to lead to an office furniture boom when investment into mainstay industries occurred briskly and many private enterprises began to take the shape of large companies. With the increasing number ready-made products, the importance of planning and production management was underlined. And in offices, accessories like telephones and typewriters began to be used, but office furniture consisted of simple equipment like steel desks, chairs, cabinets, and so on. It looked like the Army surplus style had caught on.

Service industries soon began sprouting up and office work became more sophisticated by the time the 1980s rolled around. Fields like information collection, storage and analysis had gained importance, and with more frequent use of typewriters, for example, someplace had to be found to put them.

The situation changed entirely, however, in the 1990s with the rapid introduction of personal computers and other kinds of office equipment to the workplace and the ever growing importance of collection, storage and analysis of information. The personal computer, in particular, emerged as an essential piece of office equipment, which in turn led to new concepts in office design. The dramatic change in the office environment resulted in the desire for partitions, mobile racks and cabinets designed to make the most of limited office space.

Korea's office furniture industry has developed remarkably to meet the rapid change in the office environment, and in the process, a variety of office-related products have been developed. Domestic enterprises have been preparing for the coming era of the high-tech office environment with the seemingly imminent onset of a revolution in the communications sector centered on optical and digital wireless communications.

According to the materials they use, the office furniture industry can be divided into two categories; wood furniture and metal. Within those categories, the market includes desks, chairs, partitions, racks and cabinets. Wood products, despite their softness, attractiveness and class tend to appear politically incorrect because of the concern today for forests. Steel products can minimize possible environmental damage through recycling efforts, so now most office furniture is made of the two materials appropriate to the purpose for which it will be used.

"I believe that a restructuring of Korea's furniture market will occur within the next three or four years. It will not take more than six or seven years at most. With the fast opening of the domestic market to foreign makers, only five to six major local producers will survive," said Mr. Jin Jang-youl, who has been engaged in the furniture industry since 1987. As a matter of fact, Korea's furniture industry, due to a lack of technology, has barely moved beyond the stage of imitating advanced foreign products. Since office furniture has similar patterns of usage around the world, technology and quality has resulted in market dominance for a few cutting-edge companies. If the world's leading furniture makers like Herman Miller, Steelcase and Okamura advance into the Korean market, it is apparent that the small Korean companies will face collapse. And the spreading tendency toward systematic office automation has aggravated the difficulties facing the faltering furniture firms. A furniture system, composed of at least 100 parts, takes about two or three years for development of the necessary components. In this vein, it has almost become impossible for the small-sized firms with little money and poor technology to develop furniture systems. Relatively large companies, for their part, have also hesitated in developing new products as they feel they cannot expect significant profits because of the quick development of new models and the short life span of furniture lines. Against all odds, Korean producers have mobilized all possible efforts to cope with the current hardships.

Fursys Inc. has raised the flag in this regard. Founded in 1983, the company has made considerable investment in the production of system furniture. "The office is a place for work and work is life itself since life means work. So the office concept should be expanded as a space for life itself," says Fursys chairman Kim Young-chul. The company made waves in the office furniture industry in 1986 when it came up with the so-called Eurotech Series. The company's line drew huge popularity at that time to the extent that clones of the company's products began showing up both at home and abroad. Even the office of General Norman Schwartzkopf of Gulf War fame was outfitted with Fursys products.

The company, now exporting goods to more than thirty nations worldwide, is very proud of the fact it carries its own brand, technology and design, and Fursys is not stingy in investing in research and development. The company's design and development team chief, Choi Soo-Shin, has had an interesting career. Before moving to the company, he worked as an auto designer at Kia Motors. He says that, contrary to what people might believe, furniture is not easier to design than automobiles. "Cars and furniture are similar in that they are closely related to the human touch. So they need to satisfy the users' needs. Any inconveniences must be eliminated with the proper design and components. And visual pleasure is a basic requirement for the creation of a comfortable work environment," he said.

In its operation, Fursys takes charge of determining basic concepts for furniture and the production of desks and tables while cooperating companies like Citem Inc., Hans Inc., and Furin Inc., have been producing their chairs, partition related goods and other special furniture.

In contrast, BIF Company, which was founded in 1966, now owns Asia's largest production lines. The company started out by manufacturing wooden furniture for the home but has now also become the second largest maker of office furniture in Korea. On the basis of its experience in producing wood furniture, the company has begun production of metal products and furniture utilizing mixed materials. The firm has concentrated its efforts on the development of products which can compete in international markets. Compared with Fursys, the company has put more emphasis on developing new lighter and softer materials.

BIF has also made considerable investment toward business globalization. In 1980, it set up a branch firm in Hong Kong, followed by similar ones in Los Angeles and Japan. Acquiring a franchise license for the State of California allowed it to established franchise stores in the state. It was a huge amount of investment for a medium-sized company, but now it has sales agents in thirty nations. And BIF is operating twelve showrooms in six nations; the United States, UAE, Thailand, Russia, Hong Kong and Singapore. Plans are on the drawing board to set up seven more showrooms in Canada, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and the U.S. The showrooms are designed to sell office furniture as well as meet advertising needs in the local markets.

In addition to selling furniture, the agents and showrooms are charged with offering various kinds of services for local customers like providing advice on the installation of furniture. Equipped with a self-developed CAD system, the company can provide clients with the opportunity to select furniture most suitable to their needs.

Both Fursys and BIF are among the companies producing quality furniture with comparatively high prices. But there are still many companies manufacturing a variety of furniture at mid and low price points. Hanguk OA is representative of such companies. One of their innovative products is a partition with electric wires and cords built in. For the development of furniture with such special characteristics, the company has been operating an institute for design and research. On the occasion of acquiring ISO 9001 quality certification, the company has been preparing for export. Hyundai Wood Industries, for its part, has focused its efforts on the production of high-tech office furniture, supported by the Hyundai Group in setting up a research center, through which it acquired a patent for its OA system manufacturing.

These companies have all been able to engage in brisk production by making considerable investment in the office furniture sector. They have not had to introduce advanced technology from other nations, but have rather mobilized efforts to develop products with their own technology and their own brands and have succeeded in selling them abroad as well as at home. This is quite a remarkable achievement when compared with many of Korea's other industries--take footwear for example--in which the nation never really developed own-brand exports even though the domestic producers were equipped with world-class technology.

Dasan Office System Furniture Co., which has been doing business in the Russian Far East, is another example of a company attracting popularity by developing it own brand, "Talanto."

For Korean companies, owning the brand means controlling particular factors that OEM manufacturers can't, for example, design and technology. These days design has gained more importance than any other process. Poongwon OA Inc., in cooperation with other small companies, has embarked on efforts to develop state-of-the-art design and has solicited the assistance of top Italian designers. The cooperation in this case comes in the form of a committee. The committee chairman Kim Hee-il, well aware of the importance of design, has regularly participated in exhibitions like Eimu in Italy and ORGATEC in German over the past 10 years. The cooperative committee has recently developed its own brand under the name "Better Choice Better Life" (BCL).

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But a new trend has begun to develop, mainly in developed nations like the United States, toward the concept of using no office at all. Some multinational companies in Korea like IBM Korea have adopted this concept as well. At IBM, they have set up a system of handling jobs in the field and communicating through notebook computers when necessary. Nearly half of their 1,200 employees in Korea are now in a "mobile office." Should such a trend catch on, the role of office furniture will gradually lose importance. With modern communications, more and more people are able to work at home, so the office as we know it may possibly disappear in the future. To meet the changing trend an increasing number of firms have begun production of home office furniture.

In an office or at home, comfort is the key to making workers happy, and that's where chair design becomes important. While desks hold the various office equipment and writing tools, chairs hold the people. But in Korea, chairs have always been regarded as desk accessories. In most developed nations with highly advanced furniture technology, the prices of chairs tend to be higher than those of desks.

Hanyang Ind. Co. has put all their concentration in the production of chairs for over thirty years and has domestically become a premier company in that regard. By developing unique models equipped with traditional Korean beauty combined with human engineering design, the company is now preparing for an assault on international markets.

At present the company specializes in office and children's chairs though it has produced a variety of products. The number of models developed by Hanyang reaches 1,000 items, of which 300 are included in their current offering. Representative chairs include the Rendezvous and Elite series which received the GD (Good Design) SD (Successful Design) mark, given for products with excellent design and with successful marketing, respectively. Recently, the firm has started developing ultra-light products using engineered plastic.

Dongsung is another company which has focused only on manufacturing office chairs by using state-of-the-art design and mechanisms. The Human Best series, one of the firm's primary labels, is well known for the mechanical tilting and gliding system in which the seat and back boards are movable in accordance with the users' needs. The system helps alleviate fatigue as it takes the stress off the back and legs for optimal comfort.

And as comfort becomes recognized as a greater contribution to productivity, a great many small companies have begun producing chairs.

Haejung Co., is one of them, and has drawn attention by developing the so-called "duo-back chair." With a double-faceted back board, the chair is designed to lessen burden on the waist by 20 percent. The firm is only the second in the world to develop such a design, in cooperation with Germany's leading chair maker, Greel. The company is planning to develop new products based on the technology used for automobile seats. So far, it has focused on exporting its products.

Office furniture is basically a set of tools designed to maximize work efficiency, providing office personnel with convenience at work. And with the growing trend toward diversification and specialization of office work, the need for the office environment and equipment to fit each unique situation and individual has become a chief concern for workers, employers and furniture designers alike. So far, in Korea, most office workers appear not to have cared much about what kinds of office furniture they were surrounded with or which companies produced them. They only had time to engaged in the work itself.

But this science connecting efficiency with the quality of office furniture has now spread to a large number of Korean firms. For instance, the thirty leading Korean companies have all introduced system office furniture to their workplaces, apparently in bids to upgrade the work environment and raise productivity. Other relatively small companies have also begun to recognize the importance of the work environment through system furniture. It will not be long until everyone jumps on the bandwagon and adopts the office furniture system. There is expected to be an increasing influx of foreign products during this revolution, prompted by further opening of the domestic market. And competition with foreign office furniture producers to gain market share both in Korea and abroad will certainly heat up.

The modern office is obviously changing. To deal with that and the need to suit the individual tastes of Mr. Kim and every other office worker in the world, furniture makers will have to develop systems and designs that even George Jetson couldn't imagine.

by Yung-Tak Oh

Office environment design is in its infancy in Korea. Woori Design Company, Ltd. is one of only a few companies which are now engaged in such work in Korea. So, even though it is small in size, Woori Design is exerting itself as a leading company. The following is a conversation with Mr. Gye-hwan Park, the president. Could you explain how the office environment in Korea has changed? The broad term 'office environment' consists of both a building's exterior and interior design and atmosphere, but I am going to talk about the concept from the inside environment point of view. It was in the early 1980s that the concept of office environment was introduced in Korea. Companies were trying to overcome a recession in the domestic market, which had been caused by oil crises after the economic boom in late 1970s, so they turned toward improving working efficiency. They put divisions that were doing similar work in one large open space instead of smaller rooms. But in those days, a company required a strict organization culture due to emphasis on efficiency. So the office was designed to be administration-oriented. That situation changed with a business upturn in the mid-1980s which made companies rethink their corporate culture. Workers rearranged their desks in order to humanize and personalize their workplace, which also allowed them easier communication with their peers. But the practice changed dramatically in the 1990s because of the PC. The change in environment could easily be considered a revolution. Workers are formulating a new office environment with continuous improvement in relations between employees and employers and with a richer, maturing business environment. While still maintaining a cooperative spirit, companies are now trying to provide a private workspace for every employee or team so they may better concentrate on their own work. To keep up with this trend, many kinds of office layouts are now common. What do you think most characterizes today's Korean office environment? First of all, it is to use an office most efficiently with limited space. Of course there are efforts to provide room for exercise or rest as well. But the utmost consideration is to minimize moving distance and to maximize working efficiency in order to achieve the companies' aims. For that purpose, office furniture has been changing a lot. What was your motive for going into this line of business? I worked for fifteen years at Samsung doing several jobs. And in my view, Samsung is a leader in improving the office environment. When I left Samsung, I wanted to offer my experience in working in such a nice environment by introducing it to others or to make a better environment by improving on deficiencies. My work was certainly affected by the former office environment in which I worked. In other words, my career has provided me with the know-how to run this business. What are the main obstacles you run up against? It was in late 1993 when the movement for improving the office environment was kick-started in a major way. Therefore there are still very few companies which consider office environment design as their business. Other companies usually understand it as a service to be offered to sell their office furniture. So the industry is misunderstood and it is hard educating people and building a reputation for the industry What does the future hold for this kind of business then? In the 1980s, most enterprises didn't expected that the management consulting would turn into the lucrative business it has become, I think. And this business is destined to take off just like consulting finally did. Looking at it another way, this business produces a kind of "software," like Microsoft. Just like they did, we need to employ creative thinking to change existing concepts and valuable experience to understand the nation's working culture in detail. I think it won't be long until consulting for office environment design will be an integral part of the corporate culture development of every company.