Previously Two Separate Facilities Organizations

Corning is a diversified technology company that concentrates its efforts on high-impact growth opportunities. Corning combines its expertise in specialty glass, ceramic materials, polymers, and the manipulation of the properties of light, with strong process and manufacturing capabilities to develop, engineer, and commercialize significant innovative products for the telecommunications, flat panel display, environmental, semiconductor, and life sciences industries.

Prior to 2002, separate facilities management organizations were employed in the Corning, N.Y., area to manage property and space assets aligned with Corning's R&D facilities and with its corporate staff facilities. Space management systems utilized by each of the organizations left much to be desired. With the decision to merge the two facilities management organizations and align with its new CRE function came the decision to implement FAMIS, the Enterprise Facilities Management software solution produced by FAMIS Software. Besides enabling the retirement of the two legacy systems in use before the re-organization, the application also offered the advantage of being totally Web architected and scalable to support global real estate and space management. The cost savings and avoidance realized to date as a result of implementing new and improved business processes with FAMIS as the engine have been substantial and the outlook for future value is bright.

From a space planning perspective, a key advantage of the application is its visual planning functionality that allows users to quickly generate alternative space plans and visualize their impact on the organization without changing the underlying database. The capability to develop space planning scenarios in an electronic drag and drop medium has dramatically reduced planning cycle time. More importantly perhaps, it enables the planner and customer to more efficiently collaborate when evaluating alternatives, and as a result, the graphical information exchange provides quicker, more effective solutions. As Corning has downsized in reaction to the economic challenges of the past few years, this capability has been leveraged to plan space consolidations in the Corning area that have enabled cost savings in millions of dollars.

"We partnered with corporate information technology to map out the processes that we wanted to use in the new organization, and used them to define the requirements for the new software," says Mike Cotter, manager of Strategic Space Planning for Corning, who led the team responsible for selecting the new software and merging the two facilities management organizations. "We had a strong desire to acquire a Web-based program that would offer future opportunities to apply it on a global basis. We selected FAMIS because its different components (facilities management, maintenance management, real estate, project management, and performance management) are much better integrated than its competitor. FAMIS also does a better job of supporting the two computer-aided-design software packages used at Corning: MicroStation and AutoCAD. The fact that FAMIS uses the Oracle database also provides the scalability needed for an organization of our size."

Improving the Planning Process

The new software delivers a completely integrated solution in which the database and CAD drawings simply provide two different views of the same information. The CAD technician who spent most of his time updating the CAD drawings now works on higher value-added tasks and facilities management initiatives. With CAD file updates now driven by when updates are made to the database, the dependence on CAD skills for space data maintenance has been all but eliminated. The effective value has been gaining an additional full time equivalent without increasing head count. Some of the most interesting improvements provided by the new software, however, are derived from its Visual Planner functionality, which makes it easy to generate alternative space configurations for planning purposes.

"In the past, I would meet with a customer over a large drawing and use post-it notes and sticky dots to keep a record of the changes we discussed," says Sue Koval, supervisor of Space Planning Operations. "A major problem with this approach was that, with the drawing covered with tags, it was difficult for the customer to fully visualize the proposed changes. I would go back to my office and make the changes to the drawing, which might take a day or two. Then, in my follow-up meeting with the customer we would review a revised drawing based on our initial planning discussions. Invariably, the customer would request additional changes after reviewing the plan in graphical format and I would go back to the drawing board. This process was often repeated through several iterations and involved not only a significant investment of my time, but also that of the customer.

"With the Visual Planner software, this process has been greatly improved," she continues. "The Visual Planner enables real time collaboration between myself and the customer because I can make changes on my laptop. The drawing is immediately updated, and the customer can easily see and understand the impact of different scenarios discussed. A planning exercise that previously would require several iterations spanning weeks can now be accomplished with just a few iterations and span a few hours or days. This process also typically results in a better plan because it is possible to perform many more what-if iterations in less time than in the past. For example, the Visual Planner makes it easy to visualize adjacencies that can, in some cases, be used to reduce real estate expenses by sharing facilities between adjacent groups. The customer and the planner leave the meeting with complete understanding and agreement on what changes will be made."

Reducing Planning Time

"We recently used this process to move 112 people from one building to another," says Cotter.

To satisfy growth and consolidation objectives, a larger footprint of space was required to house the operations of a Corning business unit. Space inventory analysis was conducted with the CAFM system. An under-utilized building was identified that could meet the area requirements of the business and adjacency requirements of its functional groups. A single point of contact from the business was identified to interface with Space Planning. Space requirements were compiled for each of the functional groups within the business unit including group adjacency requirements; office requirements based on position and space standards; support space requirements such file areas; conferencing facilities; and more. A proposed seating plan for the business was developed using the Visual Planner based on defined requirements. Space planning and business contacts met for several iterations of revisions to the seating plan in a collaborative setting until all requirements were met. The final seating plan simulation was submitted as a basis for the move request form. A graphic of the final seating plan was submitted to move service providers to clearly articulate move-to locations. The move plan was executed in four phases and only a minor punch list of action items was left to perform after the move.

"This was the most seamless move of that magnitude that I have ever been associated with," says Cotter. "The participation of the customers throughout the entire planning process provided absolute certainty on where everyone was going and eliminated the need for last-minute changes. I estimate that our planners and our customers spent 70 percent less time in planning this project than we would have in the past, and that this 70 percent time savings is typical of what we can achieve on every project. Even greater savings, although much harder to quantify, came from the fact that our new process results in a more cohesive and trouble-free plan."

Corning space planners are starting to use the Visual Planner tool in other aspects of the facilities management process. They recently started a project to replace carpeting in the headquarters campus, creating a color-coded map that shows where carpeting in each area has been upgraded. The Visual Planner software is also used as part of the process of creating a master plan for the research complex. In this case, color-coding shows lab service capabilities from an infrastructure standpoint. Each of these applications takes advantage of the ability of the Visual Planner tool to generate views of facilities without having to change the underlying database.

Koval recently used the Visual Planner tool to validate feasibility of a consolidation decision that resulted in reduced real estate expenses. Managers felt that it should be possible to obtain substantial cost savings by shutting down a building that wasn't being fully utilized but first needed to find suitable space for the building's remaining occupants. Koval analyzed the requirements of each of the groups and scanned the database to look for suitable properties that matched their needs. She worked with each customer to determine how much space each group needed for closed offices, open plan offices, laboratories, conference rooms, and more, and subsequently developed space plans using the Visual Planner tool for review and approval by unit managers. Using this process, she quickly obtained buy-in from the managers for their respective moves. Closing down the building saves $3 million per year in reduced energy consumption and other operating costs.

CRE Portfolio to Space Management Connection

From a CRE perspective, the ability to analyze its property portfolio from a central posture has enabled Corning to identify a number of instances where the company was paying for leases that had expired or where they were not collecting timely payment from tenants who occupied other properties. Action plans developed in follow-up to this analysis resulted in financial reconciliations in excess of $1 million during the first year after implementation.

"The move to an integrated facilities management system has helped generate substantial savings for Corning by increasing the productivity of the planning staff and generating more efficient plans that reduce real estate expenses, says Cotter.

With the facilities management database now established as a central repository for the company's global real estate portfolio, and the value of CAFM-based space management processes demonstrated in Corning, N.Y., facilities, Corning is well positioned to scale those processes to other operating divisions to drive faster and better global property management decisions. High on Corning's list of program objectives going forward is the deployment of a forecast functionality that has become available in the current release of FAMIS. This functionality will enables electronic acquisition of space forecast information from respective business units that will serve as the basis for supply vs. demand analysis.

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