Office workers in New York City spend a cumulative 5.9 years, per year, in elevators, according to an IBM study. The research showed that NYC office workers spend a further 16.6 years, per year, waiting for those elevators, meaning a cumulative of 22.5 years of potentially productive work time is wasted in the elevator process. NYC topped IBMs list but Los Angeles, Chicago, and Housten weren’t far behind, suggesting that hundreds of hours are lost staring at elevator doors from one side or the other. Finnish elevator-escalator-door manufacturer, Kone, believes that by introducing new technologies into elevators we can make better use of that time. They see future elevators as “virtual windows,” equipped with voice-activated controls, music-streaming, news-feeding and much more. Through a high-profile service integration partnership, Kone will be enabling it’s DX Class elevators with Amazon’s Alexa, for a broad range of other services. Operational-efficiency and predictive maintenance for elevators have long been part […]