Alcoa Case Study

1590 Words7 Pages
Alcoa Inc. is the world’s leading producer of primary aluminum, fabricated aluminum, and alumina. Their workforce contains over 61,000 employees in over 200 different locations across the globe, so the company is surely no stranger to success. A large part of their success can be attributed to the innovation of the company, particularly in its design for an open work environment. The open office system that Alcoa implements in the corporate office effectively tears down a variety of communication barriers with very few setbacks. Alcoa’s corporate center is located in Pittsburgh on the Alleghany River and is one of the first buildings to implement this open office system. The new system ensures that no individual has a private office, not even the company’s top executives. Instead each level of the building is equipped with special desk storage areas and small conference tables that include internet capabilities for the employee’s laptops, allowing easy connection with outside companies and external corporate partners. All of these workspaces are designed around a central escalator which allows the openness on each floor to extend multiple levels and thus allowing employees to see each other from different levels. All of the openness encourages employees to freely interact with each other from anywhere in the building and create their own problem-solving groups, while still having the resources they need to sit down, connect to the internet, and draw up plans with all of the outside companies, the customers, and each other. On Alcoa’s website the company dedicates an area to ways that the company seeks innovation, where they give a small explanation to why they are utilizing this open system stating “The speed of change in today's global economy demands a collaborative approach to innovation. At Alcoa, we understand that today's world is faster, more complex
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