Office broadband communication -OBC-. Goals, markets and reproducibility

Objective of the OBC-project is to demonstrate the multimedia information exchange between distributed office workplaces in the management domain. The project is accompanied by scientific analyses in order to identify application potential for OBC (Office Broadband Communication), to derive defining quantities of benefits and costs for the use of OBC, an to study the use of OBC and its consequences. The target group for which OBC is aimed at is characterized by jobs with mainly unstructured tasks. Prededing an analysis of the application potentials of OBC systems within this field, a definition of this target group was worked out to differentiate from the general expression "management" and to provide a rough quantitative estimation. Summarizing one can say that jobs with mainly unstructured activities can be characterized by the information requirements, communication needs, difficulty to plan ahead, complexity, design margin, determinism, novel and variable subtasks, absenteeism from the place of work, urgency, and strategic importance of their tasks. Corresponding jobs can be found especially in top management, in middle management and in staff positions. In companies/departments organized by projects (e.g. R&D) there exist with high probabilitiy many jobs with mainly unstructured tasks. To estimate the market potential the jobs with mainly unstructured tasks were enumerated on the basis of data from the IAB, Federal Institute for Labour of Germany. In 1985 these jobs correspond to a total of 2.2 million employed persons. The benefit of the use of OBC systems is seen as mainly being qualitative improvements. For the presentation of the benefits a classification was chosen, which distinguishes between benefits for the direct application of the technology at the place of work, the flow of tasks, the entire enterprise and the person of the user. The defining quantities for costs due to OBC use were classified in enumerable and intangible costs. At the present time