The Making of an IKEA Billy Bookcase

This was made entirely on my iPhone using iMovie

Last year at this time I was given an incredible tour of the Billy bookcase factory in Falkoping, Sweden. After a three hour drive directly out into the heart of the country, we came to a long low building in which every Billy bookcase is made. Owned and operated by a family that has worked with IKEA since 1952, the operation was the cleanest and most efficient I’ve ever seen. Running 24/7, the factory makes 25,000 bookcases a day and was warehousing nearly a million to have in stock for the summer holidays.

The entire operation is done by machines and robots, and the 200 or so employees help to feed materials into and take packed bookcases out of the machines (all are of German and Japanese design). Of course, there is also constant fine tuning, jam fixing and programming to keep everything humming.

When I visited they were in the process of making a new version of the Billy which has a number of design tweaks that make it more durable and longer lasting. One tweak of note is that the shelves are slightly thicker to prevent sagging over time. The NEW Billy will be rolling out in August.