Considering Systems Furniture? Look Behind the Panels
Systems furniture can be defined as furniture and panel units pre-engineered for compatibility, enabling them to be easily relocated and reconfigured by using internal staff resources.
A more detailed definition is a system of furniture components designed to provide a comprehensive office furniture environment through the ability to create a variety of workstation configurations. It generally includes interconnecting, structural panels as central integrating elements or may employ rails, beams, frames, uprights, cores, or freestanding based elements.
"Systems furniture above all should be viewed as sophisticated engineering and construction designed to accommodate virtually limitless workplace configuration options," says Mark Bassil, vice president and co-founder of MAiSPACE, a Mt. Olive NJ based manufacturer of modular office furniture systems. "Multiple components go into systems furniture. The quality of those components determines the lifetime cost of open and private offices based on the modular concept.
"Fortunately, Bassil says, "modern manufacturing techniques and supply chain management strategies such as employed by MAiSPACE make superior quality affordable. Knowing what to look for in systems furniture construction helps office managers and facility designers make correct purchasing decisions that save costs up front and over the life of the installation." Looking behind the panels is the best place to start, he suggests.
Structural Components Key to Long Life
While glass, fabric-covered, wood grain, painted or polished metal panels are the main visual elements that provide an aesthetic appeal to systems furniture, it is the structural elements to which these are attached that give evidence to long-term stability and service life, Bassil asserts. "These elements can be likened to the steel skeleton of a building, and indeed are called on to withstand tremendous amounts of weight and strain due to what they will support.
"Accept nothing less than a 3 _ inch wide frame constructed of 14-gauge cold-rolled steel to provide strength and rigidity, allowing it to remain distortion-free during installation," Bassil says. A point of comparison is a MAiSPACE panel configuration composed of 8-foot panel frames stacked 10 feet high and supported by two 24" return panels. It was rated to 2.5 tons in a test conducted by Underwriters Laboratories.
Structural framing should be capable of handling walls up to 14 feet in height. "Framing design should accommodate increases or decreases in height without removing existing panel frames," Bassil says. "This is a pillar in the MAiSPACE value proposition in terms of installation ease as well as reduced product and labor costs."
Other structural check points include knockdown and ready-to-assemble (RTA) framing components equipped with self-leveling connections. These simplify moving elements into and throughout the building while reducing assembly costs and the number of framing components required.
Another important but often overlooked element in framing design is its ability to handle the voice, data and power cabling supporting the local area network (LAN) and access to outside customers, suppliers and other groups via wide area networks (WANs) and the Internet. "The MAiSPACE patented plug and play cabling system set the benchmark for managing LANs in modular office furniture systems," Bassil says. "Managing voice, data, and power cabling is a snap because cable runs are laid in behind lift-off panel segments, not bundled and fished through structural elements."
Plan Ahead
"Office floor plans and workspace requirements are going to change at some point," Bassil says. "Moves, adds and changes (MACs) call for modular products that do it easily without sacrificing structural soundness. The benefit is improved flexibility moving forward while reducing costly installation and reconfiguration time. It also diminishes the need to buy new parts every time modifications are made."
MAiSPACE structural elements are designed and constructed to meet the challenges of MACs. "Less rugged materials," Bassil says, "are susceptible to bends and distortions that make reassembly difficult or at worst case become unusable."
MACs can likewise cause problems when conventional cabling systems are involved. These systems generally require disrupting the entire office LAN in a process that can last several days and cost thousands of dollars. The MAiSPACE cabling system solves this with conveniently placed consolidation points that permit only the desired workstations to be disconnected and moved while business continues uninterrupted elsewhere in the office. New workstations can be added by connecting them either into adjacent consolidation points or to telecommunications outlets placed in columns, walls or raised flooring.
Superior Construction at Affordable Pricing
"Company bookkeepers may think the high quality of the MAiSPACE structural system automatically means high cost," Bassil says. "Such is not the case. We have addressed cost-quality issues since we were established in 1993. The result is our unique concept of design, manufacturing and supply chain management that enables us to deliver superior quality systems furniture at prices as much as 40% below manufacturers whose names frequently are top of mind."
