Think on this next time you get into a lift: lift disruptions worldwide total some 190 million hours annually. That mind-numbing statistic comes from lift (elevator) manufacturer Thyssenkrupp, which has just greatly ramped up its elevator IoT enablement plans with the aim of halving its contribution to that total.
The company has expanded its relationship with Vodafone, which will provide a global M2M communication platform and special M2M SIM cards for existing and new Thyssenkrupp elevators around the world. Thyssenkrupp said: “This is a major contract for several hundreds of thousands of M2M connections in Europe, Asia, North and South America.”
Vodafone says it will provide Thyssenkrupp with 60,000 mobile voice and data connections and services including mobile device management and with 50,000 M2M cards to aid the remote control and maintenance of industrial products including tens of thousands of ThyssenKrupp elevators and their emergency intercom systems.
The new contract represents a doubling in volume of Vodafone’s previous contract with ThyssenKrupp.
Vodafone M2M technology is used to connect the Thyssenkrupp Elevators MAX, billed as the world’s first predictive and pre-emptive maintenance service for elevators, which is based on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.
According to Thyssenkrupp: “Reports on the elevator’s technical condition are transmitted to the cloud for evaluation, providing service engineers with real-time information on necessary repairs and predictions of which specific components will require maintenance, even before the elevator breaks down.”
Thyssenkrupp is expecting elevator service disruptions to be halved as a result of this system.
The company aims to connect some 180,000 elevators in North America and Europe. Initial deployments will be in the US, Germany, and Spain. Deployments in other countries in Europe, Asia and South America will follow and in two years the company expects to have the facility added to 80 percent of its lifts.
