Latest / The Elevator Careers Podcast / The Voice of the Elevator: Smart Maintenance & Connected Buildings | Robert Schram

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The Voice of the Elevator: Smart Maintenance & Connected Buildings | Robert Schram · The Elevator Careers Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Right now they're they're route service technicians, right?
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_02: What we want to see them is really become route managers.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: Like they should be managing their own route and managing it from a data sense so that they get some prioritization to say, I see this, and now I know when or where I should go.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what we want to help develop is when is something occurring, where is it occurring, and when do I need to go there?
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: Not necessarily the what, right?
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: We want technicians still to be technicians, but they should be able to not go up to a call and be blind.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: They should show up and have an understanding of, hey, this is where the elevator was, this is what the elevator was doing when this anomalous behavior occurred.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's really about prioritizing the technician and allowing him to become more of a manager of that route.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, and welcome to the Elevator Careers Podcast, sponsored by the Allred Group.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Matt Allred.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Does your workforce need a lift?
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: At the Allred Group, we are committed to connecting your company with top talent that matches your needs.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Give us a call at 404-890-0445.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode, I sat down with Robert Schram from Sadies to talk about how technology is reshaping the elevator industry.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Robert's path into elevators started in construction, laying flooring to fund surfing trips, before eventually working his way from field repair into some of the most advanced conversations happening around IoT, predictive maintenance, and smart building.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: We discussed the evolution of elevator safety, what it means to unleash the voice of the elevator, and how new technology could transform the way elevators are maintained.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Robert, welcome to the show.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Hey Matt, thanks for having me.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate it.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm uh always enjoy the conversations and uh I'm looking forward to just digging a little deeper.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm and I'm curious, how did you get started in the elevator industry?
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, uh thanks.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_02: So I actually started in high school doing commercial flooring.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: And through that process and and you know, starting to do floors and elevators, I started to come across elevator guys and then um came out of the industry for a little while, out of construction for a little while, and then uh, I don't know, about 2010-ish, found myself kind of wanting to go back to something that had more stability.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I always found that, right, the construction industry as a whole has a little bit more stability to it.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: And then um, so through a friend at the time, they said, Hey, you should go and you know, go to this company.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's a small independent elevator company.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: They're looking for people, and you might have to start from the bottom, but I know you, you'll you'll go.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: So I did, and I jumped in and started with an independent elevator company and started quite literally in small repair and kind of worked my way.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_02: So I started that was in 2011.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: So when you say small, small repair, were you actually in selling small repair or were you doing small repair or or what was kind of your Yeah.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: So I first started and spent, you know, some time with technicians in the field learning.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: Then uh so I spent a couple months um just, you know, tagging along with route guys for, you know, and then did some mods, you know, with some mod guys and you know spent six months doing that, and then came back into the office and started learning right the repair prop, you know, process and you know started on small repair.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: So so that time laying floors in elevator, did you ever think that, oh, one day I'm gonna be selling these things or selling components or absolutely not.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely not.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: I thought it was really cool, you know, learning from the technician that was, you know, placed there.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that that was the first thing, right?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: So they took the elevator out of service, and then a guy had to just stand there all day while we, you know, worked on his elevator.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought that's kind of unique.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: You get paid to just stand here all day and watch us, you know.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: And he was like, Yeah, but you're touching my elevators.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: I want to make sure what happens.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and you told me you were doing that to uh to get money to to surf, right?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that that was fueling the the addiction.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_02: That was it, yeah.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_02: I had uh a few older guys uh that I was lucky to grow up under here in Florida that were all surfers and construction was their way.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: So they would work heavy during the year, and then at summertime we would all break out and take a couple weeks and you know go down to Costa Rica.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so yeah, totally funded my way just to go to just to surf.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, that's awesome.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Do you still do you still get out and surf?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: I guess that's the big question.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: I do still try when I can, you know.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: Now that I have two little ones, it's more about getting them in the ocean.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: But I get my turn when I do.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: That that is awesome.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: What was it that led you to, and I'm probably gonna pronounce it wrong, but Cedis.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like Mercedes.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: No, you're not.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: Mercedes.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I would say five years ago, I started on with a company uh called Relayer working in IoT, you know, in the Internet of Things for elevators.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: And back then um with Relayer, you know, we did some great things, won some good awards, uh, especially around our dashboard.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: And then uh just over two years ago, while we were retooling the hardware, we you know kind of connected with Sadis and kind of started learning about their hardware.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: And then it was kind of just a really a match made in heaven where the two companies were.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_02: And then Sadis bought us out, bought everything from Relayer, including myself and our whole back-end team.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: And we were all blessed to, you know, come over to this company.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_02: It has been really just a great opportunity for all of us to continue what we were working on, but now continue it with you know world-class Swiss engineering and a company that brings, you know, 40 plus years of doing the work that they do in this industry.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's fascinating.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: So you you told me that this 40-year Swiss engineering really started with a light curtain invented in a kitchen, which that yeah, right?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like so walk us through the origin story, right?
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Why and why was that uh such a breakthrough for for elevator safety at the time?
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: So it we kind of got to go back to to the 80s, if we will.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, you know, during the time in the 80s, if you remember doors used to open and close, there used to be a gray bar that came down that came out of the door, which you would depress that bar and the two doors would open.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: But for people like my grandmother, especially, I mean, if that thing hit her, she would be black and blue.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, for sure.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_02: Then we said, okay, there's gotta be a better way to do this.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, the Schindlers of the world, the Otis of the World, right, were working.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I think Schindler uh came out with the first one that had basically infrared light at the bottom.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: And if you broke that beam, the doors would reopen.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: But it was real uh finicky to like light bouncing off of the, you know, out of the transoms and things.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, you know, it only had a beam across the bottom, so people putting their hands above, you know, wouldn't it stop it.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Bayot, uh, who created Sadis in from Switzerland, uh, was a photonics engineer.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: So he measures distance with light.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Cool.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: And so what he was able to do was basically in his kitchen bring up 36 independent infrared beams and then cover them in such a way that the ambient light wasn't a problem.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_02: And lo and behold, he created, you know, one.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_02: And then I would say that came out in about 90-ish, 1990, and then um it became a standard in the industry light curtains from that point on.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: But it made it much safer for people, right, entering and exiting the elevator, as those doors would close, you would break more beams, the doors would physically reopen without striking.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: That makes sense.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: And and obviously that's a big, it's a pretty big leap from crash bars to light curtains.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: What would you say is kind of the next step in change in safety technology that maybe others of us haven't considered yet?
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I mean, you know, we've been, you know, elevators, what, a hundred years or so, right?
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_02: 100 plus years.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's been mostly about the hardware, right?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: Rails, machines, controllers, doors, cables, things of that nature.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I really think the next wave or the most value is going to come from intelligence.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: Cool.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: So you're going to get into more software, sensors, and connectivity as a whole.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Very cool.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and and you talked about, which I really liked.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is fascinating, unleashing the voice of the cabin.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, what does that actually mean in practice?
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: And how close are we to elevators that can truly communicate their own issues, right?
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Or say, hey, you know, I'm I'm feeling sick.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: I need some attention, you know.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, so it's nothing new in the sense of controllers.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know, controllers, in a sense, you know, have always been self-recovering.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: And the remote monitoring has kind of been built in there, right?
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: Tyson and Otis and, you know, have been playing around it for a long time.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: But I think they look at more of what the fault is.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so when we say we want to unleash, you know, the voice of an elevator, we want to do it from a from a sense that we're almost, and in our sense, we're agnostic from the controller, right?
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: Because that controller will give me the fault.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: But what we want to do is really not necessarily look at the fault, but we want to look at the behavior and understand what the elevator's doing.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: So maintenance becomes predictive rather than reactive.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so what we want to do and what we want to look at is, you know, so many elevators are still scheduled, you know, the service is still scheduled.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, and that happens a lot of times after it breaks down.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_02: So it breaks down, now they come in and do a service, right?
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_02: Blah, blah, blah.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: We want the doors or the elevator to alert us to a door operator degrading or what ride quality degrading, a brake performance change, right?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: Traffic patterns that are unusual.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: And we want to do that from the sense of the cabin itself.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_02: So while the cabin is traveling or while the doors are opening or closing, we want to come and see that from that perspective.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: So that's why I say that's how we're, you know, kind of unleashing the voice of the elevator.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: You know.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I've obviously traditionally, you know, most maintenance relied on technicians showing up and listening to or observing or, you know, surveying the elevator.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, do you feel like that model is is becoming outdated?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: And what does that look like?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, you know, I I I love the fact that we had technicians that could show up and ride and listen to an elevator.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_02: But even when I came in, it was a bit of a pet peeve of mine to hear that, you know, even back then, I think, you know, we had 50 elevators per tech, right?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: So a route had one, you know, one technician, he had 50 elevators.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I kind of sat there and went, man, so he's gonna show up, he's gonna ride it, he's gonna listen to it, and then he's gonna prescribe what needs to be done.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: And just in my head, I thought, God, I hope he had a good night's sleep.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I hope his wife wasn't yelling at him outside the door as he's running this morning or his kids are sick, or you know, just the noise of the world isn't there.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I just don't understand how that's the way we do it, right?
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, I really want to say that we want to see people show up and be prioritized with data from the elevator to know what's going on so that we can see what the doors are doing and you know, say, okay, this is what the doors have been doing the last seven days, you know, because it may be, you know, 20 or 30 days before I'm back at this building.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: What has occurred, and and just going through a fault log doesn't really give me that.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: So we really want to see people, you know, change from uh, you know, doing the prescribing from listening to it from doing it from, hey, this is what I see from the elevator itself.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, help me understand.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it sounds like, you know, on one hand, a lot of elevators get fixed once they break, right?
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's like, oh, hey, that's the big signal for us to show up and and try to get it back on.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: How much data do you have to have before you show up proactively and say, hey, this this thing's squeaking, you know, maybe it's 75% broken, but not not broken, right?
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, how do you make that determination that, you know, now it's time to actually fix it before it breaks?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: So that's where I think you have technicians that can be technicians, and the and the difference today is allowing technicians to be, you know, right now they're they're route service technicians, right?
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_02: What we want to see them is really become route managers.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_02: Like they should be managing their own route and managing it from a data sense ability, right?
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_02: So that they get again some prioritization to say, okay, I see this, and now I know when or where, right, I should go.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and and that's what we want to help develop is when is something occurring and where do I, you know, where is it occurring and when do I need to go there?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_02: Not necessarily the what, right?
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: We want technicians still to be technicians, but they should be able to not, they shouldn't show up to a call and be blind.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: Like they should show up and have uh an under understanding of, hey, this is where the elevator was, this is what the elevator was doing when this anomalous behavior occurred.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: You know, was it traveling up, was it traveling down, speed of those doors and things like that.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, we it's really about prioritizing the technician and allowing him to become more of a manager of that route and that elevator.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I and I can imagine the data.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: I imagine they still get dispatched because the value of of having that knowledge is, you know, being out in the field, but but showing up, and maybe it's a like a surgeon showing up, you know, to the operating room, and you know, this this person just came in and here are all the vital signs and here are all the things, here's all the data we can give you, and then they can do exactly what they need to do versus riding it up and down three times.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I I don't I don't know how they diagnose, but it sounds like showing up and having enough knowledge that you can actually make the repair.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely exactly.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: And and having more data for that, right, is going to really help them again and speed us up.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I see, you know, callbacks taking two, three, you know, times just to figure out what went wrong when if you had data going there and knowing what to bring with you, right?
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: Now we can really affect what we do.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, that's cool.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: I I mean I'm just envisioning somebody's on the route to their next, you know, they got a 30-minute drive, they're sitting in traffic, and AI is sitting there informing them, okay, this, you know, this is going on, and and you know, the the motor's doing this and the squeaks on this floor and the door's acting like this.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe maybe that's one way to speed up that process of bringing them up to speed.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, again, we we send technicians to go to a building, and the first thing they do is go to the controller, start to look down at all the faults that have occurred, you know, clear that out.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_02: But they have one typically one machine, one controller.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_02: But as that building grows, they have double the amount of doors.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_02: So now if we can prioritize to what doors are doing what, we can really start.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: And the more data we collect, the faster we can get to a predictive model.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_02: We're not there today.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: But again, if you can adjust the data, understand it, you can make a better prescription or prescribe what needs to be done on that elevator.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: And then, oh, by the way, I can track to see what I did.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_02: If I tightened it to the left, did it do this?
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_02: If I tightened it to the right, did it do that?
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_02: Now I can see that, you know, and and I as a service manager can say, yes, my technician went out.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_02: I can see what he did affected the elevator, both good or bad.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's cool.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that would be really cool.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, kind of kind of real-time, you know, maintenance and and observation, all of the above.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: And you had said, you know, previously that you felt like the elevator industry is maybe 10 years behind adopting some of this and applying some of this technology.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: What would you say is holding it back from maybe adopting faster and gaining more of the benefits?
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_02: You know, historically, I think the elevator has been the industry as a whole has been slow to adapt technology.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, largely due to like entrance, right?
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_02: Entrance practices and culture doing the things the way we've always been done or have always done it.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: I think many ISPs or the independent space was funded by skilled technicians, but they transitioned from or into business from deep expertise, but I think they had little exposure to some of the tools.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_02: So they, you know, they did it on their own and how they did it.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I think sometimes that prioritizes it or slows it down because you know, the majors put out elevators that are so proprietary that then it takes a while for the independents to get the software and needs.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think as that landscape shifted, you know, I think we're trying to really capture that.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_02: But I think really the length of time or the slowness comes from right, mostly due, I think, to the culture, if you will, you know, in the industry.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and I mean, if if it's working well for the contractors and the people who are doing the service, then hey, let's let's not mess it up and let's not invest a bunch of money in unproven technology.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: There was no big push for it, I guess, is is kind of what I was assuming.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that legacy mindset, right, is there, but I think um I think the landscape is changing, right?
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_02: And it's shifting.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's you know, I so I think that founding generation, right, uh is starting to retire, the next generation coming in, you know.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: I think, right, you got private equity investors, you have this driving of the introduction of the of the modern products and platforms, right?
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_02: So we're recognizing, you know, predictive maintenance and remote monitoring, integrated workflows.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so we're kind of at that inflection point, right?
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, agree.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, where the digital transformation is no longer like a future aspiration, but a present day, you know, imperative.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_02: And because of that, I think you start to slow the gap, if you will, between the amount of years, right?
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: So agreed.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: You know, up to 2016, I think everything, if you look at the codes, was mostly mechanical.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: And now you start to look at 2019, 2022, 2025, and it's getting much more um connected.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_02: Now we're getting into much more digital security of the hoist way.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: Now we're getting into two-way communication.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, 3D door detection, all of these things are starting to transition us into a, you know, a much more connected world.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so because of that, we're gonna start to see the, you know, the years shrink from adoption to adoption to adoption.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's that's cool.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, and and it is interesting, right, to see how IoT is kind of taking over the world, if you will, along with AI, right?
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hey there, listeners, it's Matt.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I would love to know what you want to hear more of on the podcast.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a topic in mind or a guest you'd like to hear from, head over to elevatorcareers.net and drop a suggestion in the box, or you can email podcast at elevatorcareers.net.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: The link will also be in the description below.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for being part of this conversation.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, back to the show.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm I'm curious, you know, there's there does seem to be a little bit of tension between owners wanting transparency, but uh, you know, that could also expose elevator companies or you know, some of the maintenance people, you know.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: How do you see that dynamic playing out as kind of the demand for hey, give us transparency continues to roll out?
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, I think the conversation's gonna shift, right?
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: And and it's gonna shift from how much does the elevator cost to what does poor performance cost me?
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_02: So you're gonna need to show the service quality.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_02: You're gonna need to track, you know, what the technician did on the last visit.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_02: So did it solve the issue or is the anomalous behavior still occurring?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: Response times start to come into play.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_02: But I can, you know, today that the amount of cost that goes into a building front owner when the elevator doesn't work is starting to, right, it is starting to play into the overall cost.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_02: And these buildings, right, are just going up in cost, right?
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: Things aren't getting less expensive for anybody out there.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: So I think, especially after COVID, you have so many buildings that just have never come back to, you know, especially office spaces, right?
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_02: That if I'm an owner trying to rent out a floor, I need to understand more about my building today to make sure I'm I'm putting out the you know commercial, if you will, to get someone to come rent my floor.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I need the data to know that information to, you know, properly go sell that floor or rent out that space.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_02: And the same goes for, you know, trying to gain at at you know residential properties, trying to gain the proper tenants.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: I see a lot of times in buildings where the tenants won't even report the elevator being out because if they could show the elevator's been out a week, hey, Mr.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: Owner, I haven't had an elevator for a week.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: I'm paying X amount of dollars less on my rent.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, wow, yeah.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: Because I had to walk the stairs.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_02: So they won't tell you the elevator's not working.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I see it in our own dashboards on you know elevators in uh certain metropolitan areas that I can tell they didn't call the elevator in.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm calling and talking to the service manager and finding out, oh yeah, we definitely dispatched somebody, but they won't say it because they want to get money off their rent.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: Off the rent.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_02: So right that tension's always going to be there with that grading.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_02: But look, I mean, today I I think the messaging out there is, you know, in the independent space is still like we're local, we're small, and we answer our phone.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like we're all local.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, Tissin's still local, their shop is right up the street from yours.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, sure.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: Same business part.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: None of them answer their phones because every time I call it goes straight to voicemail and then the voicemail's full.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_02: You know, our routes are no longer what we used to, you know, challenge the majors on, right?
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_02: Because that's that was the playback, you know, when I first started in selling maintenance was no, hey, we have less route, you know, we have less units per tech, but now we're growing into that 120 space and you know, per tech.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_02: And now you can't say that.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, there could be tension, but that's how it's all in how you, you know, um adopt this as being something that can, you know, change you operationally, right?
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_02: We can stop running on arrival calls, we can, you know, change how you dispatch a tech, therefore changing that labor rate, and that's gonna help the tension conversation.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: Because if I'm making more money.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I like the way you said that.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: I and I think it does, it has the potential to to change the dynamic and and maybe even create competitive advantages if if used properly, right?
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: If if we're monitoring and we've got all kinds of data, but we're not looking at it, we're not responding to it, well then it's we might as well not have it, right?
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: So correct.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we've definitely taken our system and said, you know, hey, this is a tool.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_02: If you don't use the tool, right, then it's just another tool that's sitting in the in the you know the the chest there.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I think companies do have to take the mindset to change.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_02: But I think we're starting to see that.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the amount of times people have spent being firefighters and ambulance chasers, right, chasing that down elevator.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: You can only do it for so many years before you start to go, okay, I gotta think of a better way of doing this.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, I agree.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: Do you do you think that some some elevator companies may be at risk if they don't adopt and respond to this kind of technology and really kind of provide that extra level of proactive service?
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh curious what your thoughts are on that.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think the companies that think they're in the elevator business may lose the companies that realize they're in the uptime customer experience business.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: I like the way you said that.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: Because whoever controls the door intelligence, the door health, the door performance, the data controls, right?
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_02: That's the biggest source of callbacks.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_02: So if I can get all that and I can control the downtime and the customer pain, right, I I'm gonna win more.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_02: You win.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_02: Because when I go in to talk to you, it's gonna be about uptime and how I'm going to treat your elevator different than everybody else because I'm using tools that prescribe what need to be done.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: Right in conjunction with my, you know, 20, 30, 40 plus year technician who's now going to do things that are different than what it's been done.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_02: We're not showing up to listen to your elevator.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna know where things are and go from there.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_02: No, I love it.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that's the change, right?
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's changing from the mindset of selling a box, right?
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_02: This magical box of what you're gonna magically do for them, to I'm gonna do it because of this.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I like that.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: And and I what I can see is it also educates the, you know, whether the end user is actually asking for the data or or the the company's actually providing the data, they start to realize that, oh, there's there's a way to be aware of that.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: So for example, I mean you shared an example of a building owner or building taking an elevator out of service without telling the company, right?
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, okay, they need to be educated too, right?
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: They can they can learn that you know that that's not the time to do it.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: What did you say, at like four o'clock in the afternoon, they were taking their elevator down and in a major metropolitan city on a 28-story traction car, you know, now we start to question like are ropes being, you know, the weight of the car changed?
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_02: Do I have to change the counterweight?
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_02: You just can't put that car in service.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I remember being called to an elevator once, you know, years ago that they took out of service.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_02: And then, you know, we came to to see what was going on.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, when I open when the doors opened, you know, here's the sill.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_02: The floor was sitting almost that much.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, wow.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: And they put in a new floor, it was above the sill, and I'm like, it's a tripping hazard.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_02: This can't be no, you know, and uh they changed the weight of the car.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it was just, you know, uh, so then they had to get the company back.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_02: They had to tear the whole floor out, you know.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it was just a mess.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, we want to be able to, you know, at the end of the day, the elevator's own by the building, right?
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_02: And it's their responsibility to ensure it's service and how the people interact with the elevator, right?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_02: And we don't see enough of that.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_02: And and you know, phones and emergency communication, they should be taught on all these things.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I constantly see where elevators are being held and the people are timing out the door operator.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the wear and tear on that door operator, you know, now you can't say the door operator is going to last if it's constantly being, you know, timed out and torn, you know, and having issues.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_02: And we can see it.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: So now we can direct facility managers to the time when that floor is.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I've caught a cleaning crew, you know, every day, seven something in the morning, it hits the same floor and bottlenecks the building.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_02: And so they were able to get a facility manager to go up there.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_02: And sure enough, it was a cleaning guy talking to one of the people on the floor and you know, had the cart in the door, and you know, but we were able to say, hey, if you go up there right now, it's being held.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and and now they they can go.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: But they can also see what floors are holding these, you know, the flow of the building, you know, up.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so you can share more information with the building and get them to understand what their role in this is.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_02: And that's directing people how to use an elevator properly.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: For sure.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: Educating them and and really, yeah, just being more aware of real what's really going on and how how does our interaction with it, you know, affect everybody in this in this building.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk a little bit more.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: You talked about 3D detection and and you had talked about the idea that that the elevator could recognize a hospital gurney and then express it to a certain floor.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me a little bit more about smart behavior and maybe some of these things that we should expect in the future.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so as primarily a you know, a light curtain company, although we do lots of other things, building management and doors and entrances and things of that nature, light curtains have always been a staple for us.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_02: So CABSafe is our 2019 code compliant door reversal edge.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: It utilizes a time of flight in the transom of the elevator so that there are no blind spots and being able to pick up people either approaching the elevator or just passing the elevator so that it meets the code.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: And then cab sense is something that we'll be bringing, and cab sense is very cool.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: So cab sense is able to detect.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_02: So imagine a hospital, if you will.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_02: I'm on the second floor, I've got a gurney with a person in it.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_02: I got to get them up to the eighth floor.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_02: I run into the elevator with Cab Sense.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_02: That elevator, as I go through the uh sticks, if you will, of the door edges, it's gonna observe what went through it and understands what it is, and then we'll under will automatically make the ride an express ride in where none of the other full floors can call this particular elevator and it will take them directly to the eighth floor.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: That's fascinating.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_02: With our elevate and our light curtains with the IoT, we are really getting into the time where we can understand what actually goes through the light curtains and actually print out, you know, today it's only a 2D picture, but if you're hand, you know, if someone's holding the door and standing there and the whole elevator times out, and then they go, Well, we don't know what happened, I can print out the picture of the guy holding and you can see it.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: Here's a picture of the arm.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_02: Uh if you came to NAC last year and and you've come to NAC this year, we'll have it again, where we did a you know, the YMCA or a you know a conga line through it, and then everybody could see you on the screen as you walked through into the door of the elevator.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_02: So we're really starting to get into that object recognition and really, you know, we'll really be able to change the environment.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: So coming next, right, we'll understand the volume detection of the elevator.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_02: So right, it won't stop for new passengers.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_02: It makes that express ride.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_02: We'll also be able to really understand the behavior of the elevator.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_02: And we're doing this brand agnostically through the door edges.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_02: So one of the advantages for an elevator company is, you know, we've had remote monitoring and these kinds of things through the controller.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_02: But if I'm Rob's elevator company, it's really hard to modernize my way so everything's on a platform.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_02: With us, because it's the door edge, and as long as it's an automatic door, right?
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_02: Left hand, center part, opening, whatever it be, as long as it's an automatic door, we can put a door edge on it.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_02: Now I can work through all these things, no matter the brand, the make, the model, the age of the elevator.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_02: And so now I can put everything onto one platform and and share that.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think that's where the smart behavior is going to continue to evolve.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, sure.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: And well, and like you said, on unleashing the the voice of the of the cab earlier, right?
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: Just kind of more more knowledge, what's happening and how can we, you know, what can we learn?
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: We don't we don't know everything we can learn yet because we're we're just learning.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: But it it is an exciting time to to see all of that kind of coming together.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I I guess the, you know, as you zoom out and kind of look at IoT across buildings, whether it's you know, smart toilets, smart, you know, elevators, what what role do you see in elevators play in like a fully connected building of the future?
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_02: I think buildings are going to continue to become smarter and smarter buildings.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I can tell you now that they want to, you know, put IoT on toilets.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and they're doing so.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, think a hotel with 200 plus rooms.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_02: If they have a toilet that's, you know, going and and you know, starting to run, they're losing tons of money on that.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_02: You know, imagine now that times however many toilets there are.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_02: We want to start to see where that money is going.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_02: So I think elevators were still the most important vendor a building has, right?
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_02: You could catch a ride to the store, but not the top floor.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: Elevator has to work.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_02: What I think we need to do is, though, it shouldn't be this black box or or scary, you know, entity.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: It needs to be its own space, the elevator.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_02: It should be comfortable, it should be stylish, it needs to fit the building's facade, but it should no longer be right a commodity.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's a strategic asset.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_02: And because of that, it needs to be maintained, right?
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_02: Specific to the uh the maintenance control program for that elevator.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_02: And then, you know, we really should be helping our technicians by again giving them data to go out there and work on a smart building with a smart elevator, right, and prescribe what needs to be because of the behavior of the elevator, not a schedule that says, well, I should be checking this because it's, you know, X amount of months.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, it feels like if you're if you're watching the data, then then yeah, you're gonna be there possibly beforehand, fix what needs to be fixed, and then it doesn't have to crash.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: You've already got the part, you fix it, and you move on and uh greater uptime, like you'd said earlier.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_02: And and you know, bringing proposals to buildings with data that backs up the reason they should spend money changes your conversation with them as well, right?
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: They'll have a better sense that you're bringing them something that truly needs to happen because you have the data to you know support it.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Robert, anything else you'd like to share as we as we wrap up?
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_02: You know what?
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_02: The elevator industry as a whole is a is a phenomenal industry, right?
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_02: We have phenomenal technicians doing great work for the amount of people that use elevators every single day.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's still the safest means of transportation.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_02: The uniqueness of elevators, it's something new every day, because every elevator is different, right?
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_02: The applications are different, the heights are different.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's always an exciting time.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_02: And I think we're really in an exciting time to allow the technology that's been out there really help your technicians and help the industry as a whole move to a predictive space.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's the exciting part, right?
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_02: We're we're still able to say we're growing in an industry that's been around for, you know, over a hundred years, but we're still growing.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I think we're growing every day.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_02: And that's, you know, the great thing about being in the elevator trade is just, you know, every day is a growth opportunity.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: For sure.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: So last question for you.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: If if you were to talk to young Robert, right, maybe he's surfing that day and you were to give him some advice about, you know, being in the elevator space, what would you say to him?
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of advice would you give your younger self or or somebody else coming in?
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I I think um if you're looking to be in something that's going to challenge you, um, but give you opportunity to see the future, right?
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_02: Elevators are it.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um we're we're running out of land space to build.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so we're gonna continue to build up, right?
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_02: That that's the only thing that you can really say, I know for sure, right?
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_02: We're definitely gonna continue to build, we're gonna continue to build up.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_02: And that's gonna take people to do this industry.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_02: This is one of the only industries where I really think you can do and make your own course, right?
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_02: You have the ability to come into this industry and and there's your trajectory can go any way you really want it to go.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_02: If you put the time in and, you know, kind of keep to the grindstone.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_02: There's just, you know, there's no end to the opportunity.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what I would tell people, right?
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_02: You if you want something that's endless as far as the opportunities, this is the industry you want to go into.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: Love that.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for being with me today.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: I I enjoyed the conversation and and uh yeah, this is this is good stuff.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_02: No, thank you for having me.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_02: It was a pleasure to be here.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to the Elevator Careers Podcast, sponsored by the Allred Group, a leader in elevator industry recruiting.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: Please visit our YouTube channel at Elevator Careers or check us out online at elevatorcareers.net.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: Please like and subscribe.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: And until next time, stay safe.