Accelerate Productivity with KONE Construction Time Use Solution on AWS

By Pierre Voraz, Business Development, Construction Time Use Solution – KONE
By Shankar Subramaniam, Sr. Partner Solutions Architect – AWS

KONE

One of the biggest logistical challenges during construction is getting workers and goods to the right place at the right time. With optimum planning, and the right combination of people flow solutions, builders can save hundreds of man hours every day, and weeks or even months on a full project.

KONE Corporation is an AWS Partner and leader in the elevator and escalator industry. KONE’s research estimates that while the construction industry accounts for nearly 13% of the world’s GDP, in the last 20 years productivity has increased only about 1%. Meanwhile, approximately 70% of workers’ time is wasted during the construction phase.

Construction companies sometimes utilize buildings’ own elevators during the construction phase, but during this time operating conditions are very different from normal elevator use. Construction sites are dusty, foreign materials might make their way into the shafts, and heavy loads are being transported with the elevators, not to mention the wear and tear during such a harsh operating environment.

This situation can lead to high elevator failure, including call-out rates during construction, which of course takes away the productivity benefits.

According to KONE’s studies, the first-year call-out rate of an elevator which has been used during construction time can be twice as high compared to an elevator which has not been used in construction. This is not the level of quality builders or building owners expect. No one wants to move into a brand-new building where the elevator is already worn-down during construction.

In this post, we will show how KONE’s construction time use solutions leverage Amazon Web Services (AWS) to support customers during the construction phase of any project.

Construction Time Use Solution

KONE has defined a foundation for providing construction time maintenance. It has built a solution on AWS that provides a 24/7 connected service to its customers where KONE elevators have been installed. The solution enables KONE to provide machine learning-based predictive maintenance services to customers.

Furthermore, KONE has created a unique “construction time use” solution for customers where the building is still undergoing vertical construction. Such elevators “grow” with the building, and the solution is custom built to handle unique construction time circumstances and notify its field service teams or the customer (building construction managers) accordingly.

KONE construction time use (CTU) solutions speed up the flow of people and materials during construction. They increase productivity on the worksite due to their higher speed, bigger loads, and safer transportation in all weather conditions.

KONE CTU solutions include KONE CTU elevators, KONE Jumplifts, and KONE 24/7 Connect for CTU. Each service saves time in several ways:

Workers spend less time waiting for exterior hoists and more time working.
Minimal disruption and safer working environment.
Working in all weather conditions.
Faster enclosing, finishing, and handover.

The following diagram shows the key conceptual architecture of the solution.

Figure 1 – KONE CTU 24/7 data flow (simplified view).

The main benefits of KONE CTU solutions include:

Less waiting time: KONE construction time elevators and KONE Jumplifts travel faster than exterior hoists—up to 4 m/s for CTU elevators and 2.5 m/s for Jumplifts—so workers spend less time waiting and more time working.
Optimized logistics: Lower floors can be enclosed while core construction is going on higher up. Project management can be optimized and construction can be sped up.
Reduced downtime: KONE Care CTU maintenance solutions make sure the elevators are operating optimally, every day, every shift.
Cut/Lower energy costs: KONE construction time elevators and KONE Jumplifts are more energy efficient than exterior hoists, saving thousands of kilowatt hours.
Improved safety: With vertical transportation taking place inside, and the façade enclosed sooner, transportation is safer and there will be fewer workdays lost due to weather conditions.

High-Level Architecture

The following diagram shows the high-level AWS architecture that works behind the scenes to support the CTU solution suite.

Figure 2 – 24/7 KONE CTU high-level AWS architecture.

High-level flow:

Field equipment is connected to the cloud via an Internet of Things (IoT) gateway.
Equipment data is sent continuously into AWS IoT Core.
Based on rules, the data is ingested into Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) and saved to Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3).
AWS Batch is used to run jobs and look at historical data, derive predictive indicators, and create “action recommendations” instructions.
Amazon EMR Spark jobs perform real-time processing and create instruction objects (think of these as maintenance actions to be performed in the nearer term).
These instruction objects created under Steps 4 and 5 are read by AWS Fargate instances and posted to the on-premises field management systems.
Field team takes action based on what they see in the field management system.

Results Achieved

Here is an example from one of KONE’s key customers, Eiffage, which tested KONE’s predictive maintenance in one of its most iconic projects achieved and delivered The Silex² Tower in France.

This customer noted that, more than three out of four events were identified and handled predictively, avoiding issues that without KONE’s predictive maintenance would have been dealt with in a reactive manner. Any elevator breakdown would have resulted in a stressful situation, heavily impacting customers’ project timeline and profitability.

Summary

In this post, we highlighted the challenges customers face during the construction phase of a project. We described how the KONE construction time use (CTU) solutions speed up the flow of people and materials during construction, thereby increasing overall productivity.

We also demonstrated how KONE leveraged AWS services to develop this robust solution to meet customer needs. Finally, we provided an example of where this solution was used during a construction activity that led to the customer realizing tremendous value on savings and profitability.

KONE continues to collaborate with AWS to boost the power and scale of its digital services for smart buildings.

You can leverage KONE construction time solutions to unlock more productivity in your construction projects. Contact KONE and learn more about the CTU suite.

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KONE Corporation is an AWS Partner and leader in the elevator and escalator industry whose job is to make the world’s cities better places to live.

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