Changes in individual working environments and the new emphasis on work-life balance have ushered in an era of new ideas about how offices should be. Yano Research Institute Ltd. forecasts that the work-style improvement solutions market in Japan will grow to exceed JPY500 billion by 2020*1. Through collaboration with a range of partner companies, Yamaha is applying our products to offer the world new ways of working in offices.
For example, although teleworking, which removes the constraints of time and location, has been gaining popularity, this style of working is subject to an imbalance in the type of work. The majority of the work still consists of emailing, schedule checking, and document creation, and the use of remote conference systems using speakerphones remains low. One barrier is the problem of the acoustic environment. In open-plan offices, and in places like cafes where mobile staff work, people are bothered by the noise of their surroundings and conscious of being overheard, so it is often difficult for them to talk or teleconference without stress.
Therefore, we wanted to take existing products previously developed for other purposes, and combine them for use in offices, and to propose ideas that solve problems with acoustic environments. We combined AVITECS soundproofed rooms, which are mainly used for music practice; the speech privacy system that uses our unique sound masking technology by using other sound to conceal conversation; our unified communication microphone and speaker system which will make remote conversations more comfortable in future; and sound conditioning panels which adjust room acoustics. The result is a comfortable sound space within the office, where people can talk and teleconference without caring about sound intruding or leaking out. In June 2019, we launched our new VSP-2 speech privacy system. To facilitate installation in office environments, this system uses a split configuration, which separates the amplifier that serves as the sound source from the speaker which produces the actual sound. The speaker, compact enough to fit in the palm, can be installed on a wall or ceiling, to blend naturally into office spaces.
- *1 : Source: "The Workstyle Transformation Solutions Market in 2018 and its Future Prospects (solutions section)", Yano Research Institute Ltd., September 2018.