Posted by BJ
I recently worked on a client site in London and the building in which I worked (recently built) had about 10 floors serviced by a bank of six elevators.
Outside the elevators was a keypad into which I entered the floor to which I wished to go. The system then directed me to a specific elevator. Once in the elevator the system announced the floors at which it would stop.
Did you catch that? I didn’t push a button to get the elevator to come to me, enter and then tell the system at which floor I wished to stop. The system anticipated what I needed and addressed this need. It asked me “Where do you wish to go?” and then determined which car I should use to get their as quickly as possible.
This system did not operate on merely knowing where I was (based on my pushing the button on that floor) or merely letting me know where it was (by way of numbers shown as the car moved from floor to floor.)
As I used this system for several days I was very impressed by the ability of the system to load cars with people going to the same floors or nearby floors. In my several days using the system and going up and down many floors each day, I never stopped at more than one other floor. In comparison, on a recent trip to New York City I was often in elevators that seemed to stop at every floor between where I entered and when I exited the car (often stopping at 10+ floors and often there was no one waiting when the door opened [this was during school break week and I’m guessing the children had been pushing buttons for the fun of it]… ugh!
Who would have thought an elevator system could be improved, and improved dramatically in my opinion?
Makes me wonder/ponder as to which of the systems and methodologies we use, and have been using for some time, to develop proposals might be significantly improved if we stopped and thought about it.
I recently worked on a client site in London and the building in which I worked (recently built) had about 10 floors serviced by a bank of six elevators.
Outside the elevators was a keypad into which I entered the floor to which I wished to go. The system then directed me to a specific elevator. Once in the elevator the system announced the floors at which it would stop.
Did you catch that? I didn’t push a button to get the elevator to come to me, enter and then tell the system at which floor I wished to stop. The system anticipated what I needed and addressed this need. It asked me “Where do you wish to go?” and then determined which car I should use to get their as quickly as possible.
This system did not operate on merely knowing where I was (based on my pushing the button on that floor) or merely letting me know where it was (by way of numbers shown as the car moved from floor to floor.)
As I used this system for several days I was very impressed by the ability of the system to load cars with people going to the same floors or nearby floors. In my several days using the system and going up and down many floors each day, I never stopped at more than one other floor. In comparison, on a recent trip to New York City I was often in elevators that seemed to stop at every floor between where I entered and when I exited the car (often stopping at 10+ floors and often there was no one waiting when the door opened [this was during school break week and I’m guessing the children had been pushing buttons for the fun of it]… ugh!
Who would have thought an elevator system could be improved, and improved dramatically in my opinion?
Makes me wonder/ponder as to which of the systems and methodologies we use, and have been using for some time, to develop proposals might be significantly improved if we stopped and thought about it.