(Yicai) July 21 -- Kone, a century-old Finnish elevator firm, is conducting large-scale digital manufacturing upgrades at its facilities in China to improve its capabilities to offer localized services and accelerate the export of China’s smart manufacturing achievements.

Digital technologies are changing the manufacturing process of the entire elevator and escalator industry. In the production workshop of Kone’s industrial park in Kunshan, China’s eastern Jiangsu province, robots are used to handle large items, such as elevator doors, with the entire process being controlled by an automation system, Yicai learned during an on-site visit.

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

The Kunshan plant’s automation system is at a globally leading level, an executive from the firm told Yicai, adding that it has achieved full fifth-generation network coverage, precise monitoring, malfunction prediction, and dynamics optimization during the whole manufacturing process.

The newest elevators rolled off the Kunshan plant were made through digitization and intelligentization processes that enable highly efficient operation and maintenance and are capable of real-time uploading of monitoring data and transparent management via the Internet of Things, the executive noted.

Moreover, through artificial intelligence and Big Data technologies, the plant’s automation system can calculate elevators’ potential failure risks in advance and inform operators for maintenance, the executive explained. With prediction-based maintenance, elevators’ failure rate can be reduced by up to 55 percent, and the chances of trapping people can be cut by about 40 percent.

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 Kone’s 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 actively participated 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. 

During the visit to Kone’s Kunshan plant, Yicai also learned that the company plans to soon announce new investments in China, including the the construction of projects in fields such as smart logistics in the Guangdong- Hong Kong- Macao Greater Bay Area.

Editor: Futura Costaglione