Olympus U.S. National Service Center in San Jose, CA

Olympus U.S. National Service Center

Home to Olympus’s largest medical and surgical device repair facility, the new National Service Center in Silicon Valley houses 102,000 square feet of mission-critical production spaces, modern work environments, and quality amenities for the site’s 700-plus employees.

As the only repair facility for all Olympus customers in Pacific Rim countries, the Center is vital to the company’s financial and operational health. Having outgrown their previous space, Olympus sought to relocate to a larger warehouse facility requiring major upgrades to an existing building. This called for an integrated design approach: SMMA’s architects, MEP engineers, interior designers, and experiential graphic designers working to find creative solutions.

The Center sees the arrival, repair, storage, and shipping of up to 500 medical devices each day.

“We have delivery targets we strive to meet every day with our customers. One of the values we provide is being able to offer a ‘turn-around’ on their repair within 48 hours of approval.”

Will Arroyo, Olympus Program Manager

To meet this demand, SMMA’s designers optimized the building’s circulation for the most efficient flow of Olympus product. The design reduces distances between operations and departments. It also eliminates bottlenecks, accommodates flexible work volumes and staging areas, and improves transportation paths for orders and materials.

The range and intensity of operations called for a major upgrade of ageing MEP systems.

To pull this off, the design team had to structurally reinforce the building’s ageing wood truss roof to support the weight of new equipment.

In the warehouse and production spaces, a skillfully coordinated MEP design allowed for high storage heights to accommodate the extra-tall Vertical Storage Systems. The team also designed a ramped-up MEP system for chemistry labs and storage spaces, home to the Center’s most technically demanding repair work.

The new Center addresses the workplace needs of a traditionally underserved group.

Technical shift workers keep critical operations on the road. Recognizing this, the design rejects the traditional hierarchical layout of light-industrial buildings in favor of a more equitable workplace.

The large break area hosts rolling lunch breaks for up to 300 people throughout the day and evening, catering for the staggered shift patterns of the facility’s technical workers. With its flexible partitions, the space doubles as a town-hall meeting area for training and company events. Its design approach, such as interior finishes and environmental graphics, mirror the workplace standard created by SMMA at the Olympus U.S. Medical Headquarters in Westborough, MA.

Olympus U.S. Medical Headquarters, Westborough, MA

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“The break area is our employees’ favorite space, not only because it’s where they take their breaks, but because of the design. People love being able to sit with their friends at different types of tables, whether at standard height, bar height, or in a booth.”

Will Arroyo, Olympus Program Manager

All teams coexist on a single floor with no dividing wall.

Instead of separating the technical workers on the ground floor from white-collar staff on a mezzanine, all teams coexist on a single floor with no dividing wall. This promotes constant collaboration and interaction between management and their teams, streamlining the communication process. By granting equal consideration to all workers, the new space avoids the typical white-collar/blue-collar equity gap.

The new Center serves as a successful model for other Olympus device repair facilities around the world.

“We actively use the San Jose site as a benchmark for the design of repair centers in the planning phase in other global regions. The operation is known to have high levels of productivity while handling large repair volumes. Other sites remain curious how it gets done, and we eagerly share our best practices with them.”

Steve Wereley, Global Corporate Real Estate Lead, Olympus