Creative Class

When corporations redesign workplaces today, they typically want space that makes employees and processes more efficient - but that also communicates particular messages to employees or customers. For some companies, the workplace celebrates their core product.

For Boeing, that core product is airplanes. And in Renton, Washington, outside Seattle, their recently renovated facility celebrates the 737 - which is also designed and built there.

The massive 760,000-square-foot airplane hangar (originally built in 1941) now contains a sprawling office space mezzanine within it. The office space is three-stories high, 50 feet wide, and “12 blocks long” as described by Fred Moody of Metropolis Magazine. On one side, the office workplace looks outside toward the lake, and on the other has splendid views of the 737s being assembled.

The entire facility now accommodates 2,500 sales and engineering staff - formerly housed off site - as well as 900 manufacturing employees who work on the hangar floor, which can hold five 737 aircraft.

These different groups of people didn’t always see themselves working toward the same goal. As Boeing VP of 737 Operations - and visionary for this change - Carolyn Corvi explained to a journalist documenting the change for Oneworkplace.com:

“There was always a huge gap between the people who design the product and those who build it on the factory floor,� recalls Corvi. The plant was a “no-go zone� for some engineers proud of their hard-earned white-collar stature.

“Everyone’s got to be focused on the airplane,� she says, “and you can’t be focused on the airplane if you’re in an office a quarter of a mile away.�

Indeed, as Moody in Metropolis further detailed, “When something went wrong on the production line, a machinist would have to call or e-mail engineering, in a separate building some distance away, and eventually an engineer would visit the production line to see what was wrong.  A plane could be held up for days.”

In this renovated facility (that opened in December 2004) everything has changed. As described in the Oneworkplace.com article:

On the production floor - where it now takes 11 days, not 22, to make a 737 - is the revolution. Light streams in through windows carved into the 10-city-block facility, a highly controversial move - distracting and dangerous, said the naysayers - which eventually came to define the liberation of corporate culture. Engineers who once never set foot inside the factory now see what’s happening. After all, it’s right before their eyes.

… Where a problem encountered by a mechanic once took days or weeks to solve, it’s now often solved within the hour. A system of green, yellow and purple lights visually displays the status of production on the line and helps communicate when urgent issues require attention. Engineers come down from the mezzanine to offer help. Huddles form around a bottleneck. There are even cases of engineers anticipating issues and arriving before a problem arises.

For those interested in innovative ways that corporations can harness employee creativity, this is a great example.  The Boeing facility enhances collaboration between engineers and factory workers, sales people and designers. It makes more people within Boeing’s 737 division a part of the innovative process - essential for Boeing at the time as they were losing market share to the leaner, more productive Airbus.

This new space brought Boeing a 50 percent increase in productivity as well as real estate cost savings since the office space is now contained within the hangar.

The office space also celebrates the Boeing 737 in other ways. Walls in one section are made from recycled bamboo packing crates that delivered components from China. The artwork is made from spare airplane parts. Door handles were made from angle irons. The names of different building “neighborhoods” come from the names of cities 737s fly into.

And, Boeing isn’t a one-off in celebrating the product. Corvi’s inspiration came from visiting the Starbucks world headquarters, also in Seattle, in which all the corporate office space is designed to look like - and celebrate - a Starbucks coffee bar.

Addendum: I ponder whether there are lessons for cities in this style of workplace organization here.

Tags: Boeing

This entry was posted on Monday, October 20th, 2008 at 7:01 am and is filed under Technology & Innovation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.