(Yicai) July 21 -- Kone, a century-old Finnish elevator maker, is carrying out large-scale digital manufacturing upgrades at its bases in China to boost its ability to offer localized services and hasten the export of China’s smart manufacturing achievements. It will also soon unveil a new China investment focused on smart‑logistics facilities.

Digital technologies are reshaping elevator and escalator manufacturing. In the production workshop of Kone’s industrial park in Kunshan in China’s eastern Jiangsu province, robots handle large items such as elevator doors under the full control of automated system, Yicai learned during an on-site visit.

The park is Kone’s largest production site worldwide and its biggest research and development center outside of Finland. It has a supply chain localization rate of 99 percent, and its products are exported to over 100 countries and regions.

The plant’s automated system is at a globally leading level, a Kone executive said, adding that it has achieved full fifth-generation network coverage, precise monitoring, malfunction prediction, and dynamics optimization during the whole manufacturing process.

For newly delivered elevators, advanced digital and intelligent systems are seamlessly integrated into their operations and maintenance, using Internet of Things technology to enable real‑time data uploads and transparent management, the executive noted.

Moreover, by leveraging artificial intelligence and Big Data technologies, the system can model potential faults in advance and push alerts to maintenance teams, he said. With prediction-based maintenance, elevator failure rates can be reduced by as much as 55 percent, and the chances of people being trapped inside can be cut by about 40 percent.

During the visit to the Kunshan plant, Yicai also learned that Kine plans to announce new investments in China soon, including the construction projects in fields such as smart logistics in the Greater Bay Area that encompasses Guangdong province and the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao.

As China enters a new stage of urban renewal, Kone is promoting a flexible production system, for which digital manufacturing plays a key role, said Zhou Fangshe, vice president of its modernization business in China. The company is also continuously iterating its digitized system, he added.   

A flexible production system is a production method designed to quickly adapt to changes in market demand through optimizations in technologies, procedures, and management.

Kone and other elevator manufacturers, such as Otis, have been actively participating in upgrading residential properties in China this year, supported by funds from the country’s allocation of ultra-long special treasury bonds for urban renewal projects. 

Editor: Futura Costaglione