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technology
Service technician’s
best friend
The Field Mobility App is transforming
the service KONE provides. It allows
employees and customers alike to access
key data about equipment performance,
maintenance and breakdowns.
TEXT
SIMON HUNTER
PHOTO
ÁLVARO HERNÁNDEZ
‘W
e use it for everything. Right from
the start of the day, we receive
information, whether it’s for
maintenance and repairs or for our
daily work routes. We use it for
practically everything related to work,” says
Manuel Luis
Rando
, a KONE service technician from Madrid, Spain,
describing a tool that is just important as a spanner set or a
torque wrench – the KONE Field Mobility App.
Digitalization and development of technological
enablers such as mobility, connectivity and analytics are
driving change in the elevator and escalator industry on
the whole, and altering the nature of services KONE can
offer to its customers. The Field Mobility App is one such
advancement. Manuel attests its importance from the
central office of KONE Iberica in the Spanish capital. He says
it is ‘transforming the way he and his colleagues carry out
their day-to-day tasks’.
“We are sent the addresses and locations of jobs through
the app,” explains Manuel. “Everything is on the app. If a
customer tells me that my colleague was there last night, I
can immediately find out who was on site, what problem
was addressed, and look at all the jobs and see how the
work has gone on there.”
The app can even make use of GPS location data to
choose the next destination for each technician, ensuring
that the route is the most efficient.
THE ‘HAPPY PATH’
The man who oversees this technology – which started
as an independent PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) and is
now an app integrated into a heavy-duty smartphone – is
Markus Huuskonen
, Global Maintenance Process Owner
at KONE.
“We wanted to have real-time information for our
customers and provide guidance to our technicians,” says
Markus, explaining the origin of the project.
“For the technicians, the workflow means you don’t have
to start opening different applications – everything is there
available at the right time when you are doing your job. We
call it the ‘happy path’ since it makes everything as easy as
Manuel Luis
Rando uses the
Field Mobility
App on his phone.
possible for the technician, by minimizing the number of
times the technician has to click the screen,” he notes.
Meanwhile, the customer can use KONE Care Online
service to access or track KONE’s actions in addressing the
issue at hand.
“There are different options for each type of customer,”
explains Markus. “We can either send SMS messages to keep
them updated or send the information via email. We even
have a customer mobile application.”
“Equipment performance, maintenance, breakdowns,
repairs – it’s all there for the customer to see in real time,”
Markus points out.
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