Office automation

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Written on 2:54 AM by Saif Rehman

Office automation refers to the varied computer machinery and software used to digitally create, collect, store, manipulate, and relay office information needed for accomplishing basic tasks and goals. Raw data storage, electronic transfer, and the management of electronic business information comprise the basic activities of an office automation system.

The history of modern office automation began with the typewriter and the copy machine, which mechanized previously manual tasks. Today, however, office automation is increasingly understood as a term that refers not just to the mechanization of tasks but to the conversion of information to electronic form as well. The advent of the personal computer revolutionized office automation, and today, popular operating systems and user interfaces dominate office computer systems. This revolution has been so complete, and has infiltrated so many areas of business, that almost all businesses use at least one commercial computer business application in the course of daily activity. Even the smallest companies commonly utilize computer technology to maintain financial records, inventory information, payroll records, and other pertinent business information. "Workplace technology that started as handy (but still optional) business tools in the 1980s evolved into a high-priority requirement in the 1990s," summarized Stanley Zarowin in Journal of Accountancy. "As we enter the new millennium, it has taken another quantum leap, going from a priority to a prerequisite for doing business."

THE BASICS OF OFFICE AUTOMATION

Generally, there are three basic activities of an office automation system: data storage of information, data exchange, and data management. Within each broad application area, hardware and software combine to fulfill basic functions.

Data storage usually includes office records and other primary office forms and documents. Data applications involve the capture and editing of files, images, or spreadsheets. Word processing and desktop presentation packages accommodate raw textual and graphical data, while spreadsheet applications provide users with the capacity to engage in the easy manipulation and output of numbers. Image applications allow the capture and editing of visual images.

Text handling software and systems cover the whole field of word processing and desktop publishing. Word processing, the most basic and common office automation activity, is the inputting (usually via keyboard) and manipulation of text on a computer. Today's commercial word processing applications provide users with a sophisticated set of commands to format, edit, and print text documents. One of the most popular features of word processing packages are their preformatted document templates. Templates automatically set up such things as font size, paragraph styles, headers and footers, and page numbers so that the user does not have to reset document characteristics every time they create a new record.

Desktop publishing adds another dimension to text manipulation. By combining the features of a word processor with advanced page design and layout features, desktop publishing packages have emerged as valuable tools in the creation of newsletters, brochures, and other documents that combine text and photographs, charts, drawings and other graphic images.

Image handling software and systems are another facet of office automation. Examples of visual information include pictures of documents, photographs, and graphics such as tables and charts. These images are converted into digital files, which cannot be edited the same way that text files can. In a word processor or desktop publishing application, each word or character is treated individually. In an imaging system, the entire picture or document is treated as one whole object. One of the most popular uses of computerized images is in corporate presentations or speeches. Presentation software packages simplify the creation of multimedia presentations that use computer video, images, sound, and text in an integrated information package.

Spreadsheet programs allow the manipulation of numeric data. Early popular spreadsheet programs such as Visi Calc and Lotus 123 greatly simplified common business financial record keeping. Particularly useful among the many spreadsheet options is the ability to use variables in pro forma statements. The pro forma option allows the user to change a variable and have a complex formula automatically recalculated based on the new numbers. Many businesses use spreadsheets for financial management, financial projection, and accounting.

DATA EXCHANGE While data storage and manipulation is one component of an office automation system, the exchange of that information is another equally important component. Electronic transfer is a general application area that highlights the exchange of information between more than one user or participant. Electronic mail, voice mail, and facsimile are examples of electronic transfer applications. Systems that allow instantaneous or "real time" transfer of information (i.e. online conversations via computer or audio exchange with video capture) are considered electronic sharing systems. Electronic sharing software illustrates the collaborative nature of many office automation systems.

Office automation systems that include the ability to electronically share information between more than one user simultaneously are sometimes referred to as groupware systems. One type of groupware is an electronic meeting system. Electronic meeting systems allow geographically dispersed participants to exchange information in real time. Participants in such electronic meetings may be within the same office or building, or thousands of miles apart. Long-distance electronic sharing systems usually use a telephone line connection to transfer data, while sharing in the same often involves just a local area network of computers (no outside phone line is needed). The functional effectiveness of such electronic sharing systems has been one factor in the growth of telecommuting as an option for workers. Telecommuters work at home, maintaining their ties to the office via computer.

Electronic transfer software and systems allow for electronic, voice, and facsimile transmission of office information. Electronic mail uses computer based storage and a common set of network communication standards to forward electronic messages from one user to another. Most of these systems allow users to relay electronic mail to more than one recipient. Additionally, many electronic mail systems provide security features, automatic messaging, and mail management systems like electronic folders or notebooks. Voice mail offers essentially the same applications, but for telephones, not computers. Facsimile transmissions are limited to image relay, and while usage of this communication option has declined somewhat with the emergence of electronic mail, fax machines remain standard in almost all business offices in America. In addition, new technologies continue to transform fax use, just as they have influenced other modes of corporate communication. For example, facsimile converters for the personal computer that allow remote printing of "faxed" information via the computer rather than through a dedicated facsimile machine are now available. Indeed, these facsimile circuit boards for the microcomputer are slowly replacing stand-alone fax machines. Simultaneously, other traditional office equipment continues to undergo changes that improve their data exchange capacities as well. Digital copiers, for example, are increasingly multifunctional (with copying, printing, faxing, and scanning capabilities) and connectable to computer networks.

DATA MANAGEMENT Office automation systems are also often used to track both short-term and long-term data in the realms of financial plans, workforce allocation plans, marketing expenditures, inventory purchases, and other aspects of business. Task management or scheduling systems monitor and control various projects and activities within the office. Electronic management systems monitor and control office activities and tasks through timelines, resource equations, and electronic scheduling. As in data exchange, groupware and network computer systems are gaining in popularity for data management. Under such arrangements, multiple members of the office environment are provided with access to a variety of information at a central electronic location.

OFFICE AUTOMATION CONSIDERATIONS: PEOPLE, TOOLS, AND THE WORKPLACE

Businesses engaged in launching or upgrading office automation systems must consider a wide variety of factors that can influence the effectiveness of those systems. These factors include budgetary and physical space considerations, changes in communication infrastructure, and other considerations. But two other factors that must be considered are employee training and proliferating office automation choices:

  • Training—People involved with office automation basically include all users of the automation and all providers of the automation systems and tools. A wide range of people—including software and hardware engineers, management information scientists, executives, mid-level workers, and secretaries—are just a few of the people that use office automation on a daily basis. As a result, training of personnel on these office automation systems has become an essential part of many companies' planning. After all, the office automation system is only as good as the people who make it and use it, and smart business owners and managers recognize that workplace resistance to these systems can dramatically lessen their benefits. "It's true that as technology matures the need for special training will decline—because tomorrow's software and hardware will be much more intuitive and loaded with built-in teaching drills—that time is not here yet," wrote Zarowin. "Training is still essential."
  • Choice—A dizzying array of office automation alternatives are available to businesses of all shapes, sizes, and subject areas. Such systems typically involve a sizable investment of funds, so it is wise for managers and business owners to undertake a careful course of study before making a purchase. Primary factors that should be considered include: cost of the system, length of time involved in introducing the system, physical condition of the facility into which the system will be introduced, level of technical support, compatibility with other systems, complexity of system (a key factor in determining allocations of time and money for training), and compatibility of the system with the business area in which the company is involved.

As the high-tech New Economy continues to evolve over the next several years, business experts warn small businesses not to fall too far behind. Some small businesses remain resistant to change and thus fall ever further behind in utilizing office automation technology, despite the plethora of evidence that it constitutes the wave of the future. The entrepreneurs and managers who lead these enterprises typically defend their inaction by noting that they remain able to accomplish their basic business requirements without such investments, or by claiming that new innovations in technology and automation are too expensive or challenging to master. But according to Zarowin, "those rationalizations don't acknowledge what many recent converts to technology are discovering: the longer one delays, the larger the gap and the harder it is to catch up. And though many businesses still can function adequately with paper and pencil, their customers—and their competition—are not sitting on their hands."

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What is a Cubicle

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Written on 6:49 AM by Saif Rehman

A cubicle, cubicle desk or office cubicle is a partially enclosed workspace, separated from neighboring workspaces by partitions that are generally five to six feet high. A cubicle is partially or entirely open on one side to allow access. A cubicle's purpose is to isolate office workers from the sights and noises of an open workspace, the theory being that this allows workers more privacy and helps them to concentrate without distractions. Horizontal work surfaces are usually suspended from the partitions of cubicles, as is shelving, overhead storage, and other amenities.


Origin

The term cubicle comes from the Latin cubiculum, for bed chamber. It was used in English as early as the 15th century. It eventually came to be used for small chambers of all sorts, and for small rooms or study spaces with partitions which do not reach to the ceiling.

Like the older carrel desk, a cubicle seeks to give a degree of privacy to the user while taking up minimal space in a large or medium sized room. Like the modular desk of the mid-20th century, it is composed of modular elements that can be arranged in various ways with standard hardware or custom fasteners, depending on the design. Installation is generally performed by professionals, although some cubicles allow configuration changes to be performed by users without specific training. Cubicles are highly configurable, allowing for a variety of elements such as work surfaces, overhead bins, drawers, and the like to be installed, depending on the individual user's needs.

Some sources attribute the introduction of the cubicle desk to the computer chip manufacturer Intel Inc. during the 1960s. Its creation is generally attributed to Robert Propst, a designer from Colorado who worked for Herman Miller Inc., a major manufacturer of office furniture. It was based on a 1965 prototype and named the Action Office, made up of modular units with an open plan, an entirely novel system for the time.

An office filled with cubicles is sometimes called a cube farm. Although humorous, the phrase usually has negative connotations. Cube farms are often found in high-tech companies, but they also appear in the insurance industry and other service-related fields. Many cube farms were built during the dotcom boom.


Versatile cubicle walls

On the positive side the cubicle desk offers an occasion for customization by its users which is not comparable to other desk forms, past or present. The secret is that it can transform all of the walls surrounding the white-collar worker into productive work surfaces, or nooks for personal expression. Because all of the walls are within grasp or reach all of the time, and because many of them offer holes and hooks for hanging small shelves, bulletin boards or other accessories, elements which were once placed only on the horizontal surface of the desktop can be moved to the vertical surfaces all around. While the makers of cubicle desks usually employ proprietary standards for their fasteners and accessory hooks, this has not stopped the makers of small-scale desktop accessories from producing and marketing myriads of pen holders, magazine racks, and other items which are made to fit the most popular brands of cubicle desk partitions.

Note that it is also possible to create a cubicle-filled office environment without the use of cubicle desks by combining traditional free-standing desk forms like the pedestal desk with special types of free-standing partitions. This kind of environment is often part of a general office landscaping effort which was popularized in the 1950s and the 1960s in Germany and the United Kingdom.

Explorations of the cubicle form

Some interesting R&D has been going on in the field of cubicles at the turn of this millennium. One of the most sarcastic critics of the cubicle has been Scott Adams, speaking through his comic strip, Dilbert. In 2001 he teamed up with the design company IDEO to create "Dilbert's Ultimate Cubicle" [1]. It had some whimsical aspects but there were also some very sound design ideas such as an original modular approach and attention to usually neglected ergonomic details like the change in light orientation as the day advances. Similarly, Douglas Coupland has coined the phrase "veal-fattening pen," in parody of the cubicle in his novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture.

Between 2000 and 2002 IBM partnered with the office furniture manufacturer Steelcase, and did some very thorough research on the software, hardware and ergonomic aspects of the cubicle of the future (or the office of the future) under the name "BlueSpace". They produced several prototypes of this hi-tech multi screened workspace and even exhibited one at Walt Disney World. Bluespace offered movable multiple screens inside and outside, a projection system, advanced individual lighting heating and ventilation controls and a host of software applications to orchestrate everything.

In 1994 the designer Douglas Ball planned and built several iterations of the "Clipper" or "CS-1", a "capsule" desk looking like the streamlined front fuselage of a fighter plane. Meant as a computer workstation, it had louvers and an integrated ventilation system, as well as a host of built-in features typical of the ergonomic desk. An office space filled with these instead of traditional squarish cubicles would look like a hangar filled with small flight simulators. It was selected for the permanent design collection of the design Museum in the United Kingdom.

Cube farms in pop culture

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Modern Office

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Written on 6:48 AM by Saif Rehman

What makes a modern office different from the traditional one?

Office design, since the introduction of typewriter in the early 1900's up until mid- to late 1970's remained virtually unchanged. Dedicated word processing systems such as WANG, for example, started being used in mid-seventies. This was the beginning of a period of rapid changes in office technology. PCs that from early eighties become the main tool for office workers, continue transforming offices at an ever increasing pace. And it's not over yet.

All changes in the office environment were and still are driven by advances in technology. The overwhelming impact of computers on office work has resulted in redesigning the office around, if not for, the computer. In many instances the computers have changed not only the shape of the office and the way office work is done, but it has also affected even the lifestyle of office workers.

Do computers contribute to health problems among their users?

Like many other innovations, computers generated a great deal of resistance at first. People raised concerns about the effects of radiation on everything from their eyes, to their neck, shoulders, arms and back, even to their reproductive fertility and pregnancy outcome. Headaches, eyestrain, muscular tension, and suspicious clusters of miscarriages were widely reported. However, studies which have addressed these concerns have failed to prove that any measurable radiation, no matter how minimal, has been responsible for any of the adverse effects reported.

Nevertheless, one cannot discount the increasing numbers of dissatisfied and/or injured office workers: their discomfort and health problems are very real. There is very little doubt that working with computers (with emphasis on the actual work and not the computers themselves) causes or heavily contributes to these problems.

Why ergonomics for the computer users became so important?

The number of people working with computers is ever growing: some estimate that soon they will account for more than half of the working population, creating the biggest challenge for occupational health and safety. What is even more alarming is the high number of complaints about discomforts and injuries. And, against all expectations, the wider application of ergonomic principles is not dramatically alleviating the problems. This creates a new challenge to convince computer operators and, as a matter of fact, all working people that their own health and well-being depends as much, if not more, upon their own actions rather than upon the institutionalized health care system. Prevention through participation may be the right approach. In other words, "the involvement of people in planning and controlling a significant amount of their own work activities, with sufficient knowledge and power to influence both processes and outcomes in order to achieve desirable goals".

Other documents listed in the "Office Ergonomics" Section of OSH Answers will discuss the hazards of working in computerized offices as well as how to prevent the resulting discomfort and injury.

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Meaning Of An Office

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Written on 6:42 AM by Saif Rehman

An office is generally a room or other area in which people work, but may also denote a position within an organization with specific duties attached to it (see officer, office-holder, official); the latter is in fact an earlier usage, office as place originally referring to the location of one's duty. When used as an adjective, the term office may refer to business-related tasks. In legal writing, a company or organization has offices in any place that it has an official presence, even if that presence consists of, for example, a storage silo rather than an office.

An office is an architectural and design phenomenon and a social phenomenon, whether it is a tiny office such as a bench in the corner of a "Mom and Pop shop" of extremely small size (see small office/home office) through entire floors of buildings up to and including massive buildings dedicated entirely to one company. In modern terms an office usually refers to the location where white-collar workers are employed.


History of offices

A typical busy North American office
A typical busy North American office

The word stems from the Latin officium, as its equivalents in various mainly romance languages. Interestingly, this was not necessarily a place, but rather an often mobile 'bureau' in the sense of a human staff or even the abstract notion of a formal position, such as a magistrature. The relatively elaborate Roman bureaucracy would not be equaled for centuries in the West after the fall of Rome, even partially reverting to illiteracy, while the East preserved a more sophisticated administrative culture, both under Byzantium and under Islam.

Offices in classical antiquity were often part of a palace complex or a large temple. There was usually a room where scrolls were kept and scribes did their work. Ancient texts mentioning the work of scribes allude to the existence of such "offices". These rooms are sometimes called "libraries" by some archaeologists and the general press because one often associates scrolls with literature. In fact they were true offices since the scrolls were meant for record keeping and other management functions such as treaties and edicts, and not for writing or keeping poetry or other works of fiction.

The medieval chancery was usually the place where most government letters were written and where laws were copied in the administration of a kingdom. The rooms of the chancery often had walls full of pigeonholes, constructed to hold rolled up pieces of parchment for safekeeping or ready reference, a precursor to the book shelf. The introduction of printing during the Renaissance did not change these early government offices much.

Pre-industrial illustrations such as paintings or tapestries often show us personalities or eponyms in their private offices, handling record keeping books or writing on scrolls of parchment. All kinds of writings seemed to be mixed in these early forms of offices. Before the invention of the printing press and its distribution there was often a very thin line between a private office and a private library since books were read or written in the same space at the same desk or table, and general accounting and personal or private letters were also done there.

An office in 1903.
An office in 1903.

Space arrangement in offices

There are many different ways of arranging the space in an office and whilst these vary according to function, managerial fashions and the culture of specific companies can be even more important. Choices include, how many people will work within the same room. At one extreme, each individual worker will have their own room; at the other extreme a large open plan office can be made up of one main room with tens or hundreds of people working in the same space. Open plan offices put multiple workers together in the same space, and some studies have shown that they can improve short term productivity, i.e. within a single software project. At the same time, the loss of privacy and security can increase the incidence of theft and loss of company secrets. A type of compromise between open plan and individual rooms is provided by the cubicle, possibly made most famous by the Dilbert cartoon series, which solves visual privacy to some extent, but often fails on acoustic separation and security. Most cubicles also require the occupant to sit with their back towards anyone who might be approaching; workers in walled offices almost always try to position their normal work seats and desks so that they can see someone entering, and in some instances, install tiny mirrors on things such as computer monitors.

Office buildings

An office building in Salinas, California.
An office building in Salinas, California.

While offices can be built in almost any location in almost any building, some modern requirements for offices make this more difficult. These requirements can be both legal (i.e. light levels must be sufficient) or technical (i.e. requirements for networking). Alongside such other requirements such as security and flexibility of layout, this has led to the creation of special buildings which are dedicated only or primarily for use as offices. An office building, also known as an office block, is a form of commercial building which contains spaces mainly designed to be used for offices.

The primary purpose of an office building is to provide a workplace and working environment primarily for administrative and managerial workers. These workers usually occupy set areas within the office building, and usually are provided with desks, PCs and other equipment they may need within these areas.

An office building will be divided into sections for different companies or may be dedicated to one company. In either case, each company will typically have a reception area, one or several meeting rooms, singular or open-plan offices, as well as toilets.

Many office buildings also have kitchen facilities and a staff room, where workers can have lunch or take a short break.

Grading

Offices and office buildings are generally graded, in terms of quality, in a three tier grading system: [1]

Class A

Class A (or Grade A) will have the highest quality fit and finish to the internal furnishings and will tend to have more architectural detailing on the outside of the building. Such buildings will typically charge the highest rental charges.

Typical fixtures will include hardwood mouldings; 6 panel doors; sinks made of corian, china and gold; and countertops and flooring made from corian or natural stone such as granite or marble.

Class B

Class B (or Grade B) will have similar surfaces as a Class A building but using materials of a lower quality. The buildings will have fewer architectural details than typical Class A buildings.

Typical fixtues include a mix of hardwood; wood flat panel doors; formica countertops; and ceramic tiles and porcelain sinks used in toilets.

Class C

Class C (or Grade C) will have lower quality fit and finish to the internal decorations and furnishings. The design of such buildings will be basic and will typically demand the lowest rental charges.

Typical fixtures include formica countertops; sheet vinyl flooring; cheaper carpets and cheaper windows and doors.

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