Modern marketplace for changing team structures instead of an open-plan office

Offenhausen – February 2010. Direct communication between the individual teams along with peace and quiet within the office to allow people to focus on their work – the "human space" room-structuring system from Bosse, which has been proving its worth for many years, is now displaying all of its benefits in the new building of the Westfalia development department and it is presented with a more contemporary look than ever before.

Westfalia is synonymous with towbars on cars and light commercial vehicles. The company supplies almost all of the leading automotive manufacturers right across Europe, and it produces approx. 1.2 million towbars each year with roughly 1000 different types of towbars for almost all makes of vehicle. With around 850 employees, the Westfalia Automotive Group is expected to generate sales of roughly 150 million euros in the current financial year. In 2008, the market leader invested in the expansion of the factory complex at its site in Wiedenbrück in the east of Westphalia and combined the entire product production process under one roof – from prototyping through to mechanical construction.

Previously housed remotely in different buildings, since the start of this year the new two-storey building has brought together the entire development department in the corporate group, comprising some 100 employees, in one office. Divided up into seven project groups, each group handles "its" make of car. The size and structure of the individual teams can change from one day to the next. Even though there is obviously a need for information to flow between the groups, each team still requires its own individual area to work in.

The requirement for planning the office space was therefore to combine communication, privacy and flexibility in an open, modern atmosphere. This was no easy task for the office expert "Duffe Bürogestaltung" which was commissioned to carry out the planning and implementation, especially given that the renowned specialist retailer from Dülmen only had a 780 m2 space to work with in which around 90 flexible workstations needed to be installed.

But the specialist in room systems knew what to do and installed the market-leading product "human space" from Bosse, a brand belonging to the Dauphin HumanDesign Group. The timeless classic has been regarded for decades now as the prototype for intelligent room-structuring systems. Not structurally connected to the building, "human space" makes use of every nook and cranny at Westfalia-Automotive, allows an improved utilisation of space and delivers perfect routing of power and data cables wherever they are needed. All employees have their own allocated place. Thanks to radial planning, the desired mapping of working processes in the office structure is transparent and communication within the changing teams runs very smoothly.

Klaus-Peter Duffe sums up: "The great thing about this solution is that this system can be subsequently expanded or changed to cater for individual wishes, but the overall sense of openness and communication is retained."