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Understanding customer needs drives the KONE Technology team
to deliver products and solutions that are taking elevators and
escalators to new levels. Ask
Jussi Oijala
to look inside his crystal
ball to see where elevator and escalator technology is heading,
and you begin to see a world of increasing integration.
“
The user experience
will become even more
heightened,” he discloses.
As head of the KONE
Technology and R&D
team, Oijala is in charge
of about 600 profession-
als in seven countries. He also manages
the KONE Solution Creation Process,
where, as he explains, “we make sure
that our solutions are not only com-
petitive, but also fulfill and exceed our
customers’ expectations.”
According to Oijala, what the future
will hold is a world where elevators
and escalators are closely integrated
into other building systems. At its core,
this means planning the People Flow™
inside a structure so that entering and
exiting is fast and easy. It also means
that elevators use artificial intelligence
to optimize traffic.
“Artificial intelligence includes creat-
ing algorithms so that our equipment
learns the traffic patterns in a building:
when people come to work, when they
TEXT:
SATU JUSSILA
PHOTOS:
SAMI KULJU AND KONE
go to lunch and when they leave at
the end of the day. If the building use
changes, the equipment learns the new
traffic patterns to continue to minimize
wait times,” says Oijala.
Look for traditional push-button
elevators with what Oijala calls ‘dumb
technology’ to become a thing of the
past. Elevators and escalators will know
where we are and where we are going
– and will be linked even closer to the
use of the building.
FASTER WITH
DESTINATION CONTROL
Minimizing wait times is a major part of
improving People Flow inside buildings.
Another of KONE’s innovations use
‘destination control’ to know the floor
a passenger is traveling to before he or
she enters the elevator car. “With the
KONE Polaris™ destination control sys-
tem (DCS), a passenger gives his or her
destination already on the source floor,
rather than inside the car,” explains
Oijala. The destination user interface
also provides new features for passen-
gers and building occupants. “A desti-
nation control system can be integrated
with the access control system to en-
able an automatic call when a person
reaches the access gate. This improves
traffic handling performance and makes
using elevators even more convenient
for passengers,” Oijala adds.
The system’s first use was in the
Galileo Tower in Frankfurt, Germany, in
2003. There, the average wait time is
10 seconds. As a result of this success,
KONE won a contract to provide Polaris
to two other similar buildings in down-
town Frankfurt. One such project is the
new Tower 185 skyscraper which will
feature 28 KONE elevators; all linked to
a destination control system.
KONE has received other DCS orders
in recent years as well. The CB31 Tower
(formally known as the AXA Tower) in
Paris’ La Défense district is currently
under renovation. Modernization will
include 18 elevators all equipped with
a destination control system, which will
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| PEOPLE FLOW
Leading through