Based on its own experience, USM, then a manufacturer of window fittings and itself in the process of developing automated production, recognised that a new working era was dawning and developed a visionary modular office solution.

There was keen public interest and, after series production started, the first sales prospectus encouraged the rationalisation of work processes by adjusting the environment in the new open-plan offices to people.

Extract from the first sales prospectus, 1969:

Workstation design in large administrative buildings

It can safely be said that industry growth connected with rapid technical expansion at all production levels significantly changed the character of office work. Manual production methods involve significantly less pre-project and planning work than the automated production processes we know today. The resulting social, economic and technical organisation problems led to most office work being reduced to a range of planning, coordination, construction and organisational operations. This led to a new form of collaboration and, naturally, certain conceptions about room design and the environment had to be revisited. {…} When planning and coordination in an office are effective, information flows and processing are better.

Using standardised basic elements, furniture was built to suit all kinds of work and to facilitate the functional use of each workstation. {…}

Designing the right workspace is not the be all and end all. To achieve true rationalisation, one must also ask what materials are used for work and how they should be accommodated. Organising work means adapting workstations and work processes to people so that they can do their job in the shortest time, effortlessly and in all safety, taking account of human physiology. Organising work amounts to therefore nothing other than designing the optimal workstation. This is how we arrived at our office furniture system. Organisational and furniture elements are based on the principles laid down for working methods, work processes and information flows, while also serving the aesthetic function.