#Intelligentlift #Personflow #Liftcontrols
The flow of people in buildings: a balancing act between mobility and access management
“In the form of gateways, a flexible software environment and VPN-secured transmission INSYS icom provides us with an almost ideal technical environment to offer our lift solutions as a complete service. Both lift customers and their users benefit in equal measure.”
Ralf Möhrle
Software Developer
TK Elevator GmbH, Essen (D)
TK Elevator GmbH
With customers in more than 100 countries served by a workforce of 50,000 and a dense sales and service network at over 1,000 locations around the globe, thyssenkrupp Elevator has established itself as one of the world’s leading lift companies. Its product portfolio ranges from passenger and freight lifts to innovative, customised solutions for modern high-rise buildings. In addition to escalators, the company’s portfolio includes moving walkways, boarding bridges, stair and platform lifts as well as customised service solutions such as MAX, the industry’s first cloud-based, digitalised maintenance solution – and accordingly covers a wide spectrum of urban mobility.
The lift is the Achilles’ heel
The buildings of the future will be networked and intelligent. This also needs to include transport systems, especially lifts. After all, what we experience as users of lifts in large buildings usually works well, but only represents the tip of the iceberg. Distributing hundreds or even thousands of people a day to many floors in large buildings, taking into account who has access to what areas while allowing for peak times and avoiding queues is a complex feat of logistics. Even in new buildings, the number of lifts tends to be small because of the high cost. The space required for lifts is inherently unproductive and can’t be rented out. So what matters is maximum efficiency and reliability.
Access management with people flow control
Intelligent lift systems authenticate passengers at check-in terminals via a QR code or contact-free via RFID, they then assign the passenger to a suitable lift. Algorithms optimise the assignment based on relevant criteria so that the lifts achieve maximum passenger throughput. To achieve this, they travel to as few floors as possible, ideally floors that are adjacent to each other. By identifying or not identifying passengers in advance, trips to individually authorised floors can be initiated. In the process a lift ticket may be for one-off or repeated use, so that statistical values can also be applied.
This is made possible by data communication: gateways with interfaces for QR code scanners or RFID card readers record passengers and their access rights. Lift tickets are assigned and the lifts are managed in communication with access control systems. High IT security standards need to be met in order to ensure operational safety.
Data-based lift control optimises overall operations
Knowledge about lift passengers acquired by consistent ticketing and recording enables demand-oriented passenger flow control across complex lift systems, which facilitates operational management. Compared to the lift systems themselves the gateway solutions from INSYS icom required for this purpose are not cost-intensive and allow flexible control models for the operation of lift systems in high-rise buildings – including additional software applications on site to optimise operation and use through systematic analysis.
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