The Voice of the Elevator: Smart Maintenance & Connected Buildings | Robert Schram
In this episode, I sat down with Robert Schram from Cedes to talk about how technology is reshaping the elevator industry. Robert’s path into elevators started in construction, laying flooring to fund surfing trips, before eventually working his way from field repair into some of the most advanced conversations happening around IoT, predictive maintenance, and smart buildings. We discussed the evolution of elevator safety, what it means to “unleash the voice of the elevator,” and how new technology could transform the way elevators are maintained.
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:40 Journey into the Elevator Industry
05:52 Innovations in Elevator Safety Technology
07:49 The Future of Elevator Maintenance
10:14 Data-Driven Decision Making in Elevators
13:35 The Role of IoT in Elevators
15:45 Challenges in Adopting New Technologies
19:22 The Importance of Transparency in Elevator Services
27:41 Smart Behavior and Future Innovations
31:36 Elevators in the Connected Building of the Future
34:38 Advice for the Next Generation in the Industry
35:55 Outro
Transcript:
Robert Schram (00:00)
Right now they’re, they’re route service technicians, right? What we want to see them is really become
route managers, like they should be managing their own route and managing it from a data sense So that they get some prioritization to say, I see this and now I know when or where, I should go, and that’s what we wanna help develop is, when is something
Matt Allred (00:08)
Okay.
Robert Schram (00:24)
Occurring, where is it occurring and when do I need to go there? Not necessarily the what, right? We want technicians still to be technicians, but they shouldn’t show up to a call be blind.
Matt Allred (00:35)
Yeah, yeah, I hear you.
Robert Schram (00:35)
They
should show up and have understanding of, this is where the elevator was. This is what the elevator was doing when this anomalous behavior occurred. It’s really about prioritizing the technician and allowing him to become more of a manager of that route.
Matt Allred (00:52)
Hello and welcome to the Elevator Careers Podcast, sponsored by the Allred Group. I am your host, Matt Allred.
Matt Allred (01:00)
Does your workforce need a lift? At the Allred Group, we are committed to connecting your company with top talent that matches your needs. Give us a call at 404-890-0445.
Matt Allred (01:12)
In this episode, I sat down with Robert Schram from CEDES to talk about how technology is reshaping the elevator industry. Robert’s path into elevators began in construction, laying flooring to fund surfing trips, before eventually working his way from field repair into some of the most advanced conversations happening around IoT, predictive maintenance, and smart buildings. We discussed the evolution of elevator safety, what it means to “unleash the voice of the elevator,” and how new technology could transform the way elevators are maintained.
Matt Allred (01:40)
Robert, welcome to the show.
Robert Schram (01:41)
Hey Matt, thanks for having me.
Matt Allred (01:43)
Thank you. I appreciate it.
I always enjoy the conversations and I’m looking forward to just digging a little deeper. And I’m curious, how did you get started in the elevator industry?
Robert Schram (01:53)
Yeah, thanks. So I actually started in high school doing commercial flooring.
Matt Allred (02:00)
Mm-hmm.
Robert Schram (02:00)
And through that process and starting to do floors and elevators, I started to come across elevator guys and then
came out of the industry for a little while, out of construction for a little while. then, I don’t know, about 2010-ish found myself kind of wanting to go back to something that had more stability. And I always found that the construction industry as a whole has a little bit more…
Matt Allred (02:22)
Okay. Yeah.
Robert Schram (02:24)
stability to it. then so through a friend, at the time, they said, Hey, you should go and you know, go to this company, it’s a small independent elevator company, they’re looking for people and you might have to start from the bottom, but I know you, you’ll go. So I did and I jumped in and started with an independent elevator company and started quite literally in small repair and kind of work my way. So I started that was in 2011.
Matt Allred (02:47)
So when you say small repair, were you actually in selling small repair or were you doing small repair or what was kind of your…
Robert Schram (02:54)
Yeah, so I first started and spent some time with technicians in the field learning. then so I spent a couple of months just tagging along with route guys and then did some mods with some mod guys and spent six months doing that. And then came back into the office and started learning the repair process and started on small repair.
Matt Allred (03:17)
Interesting. So that time laying floors in elevator, did you ever think that, one day I’m going to be selling these things or selling components or…
Robert Schram (03:26)
Absolutely not. not. Yeah, I thought it was really cool, know, learning from the technician that was, you know, placed there, you know, that that was the first thing, right? So they took the elevator out of service. And then a guy had to just stand there all day. While we, you know, worked on his elevator. And I thought that’s kind of unique, you get paid to just stand here all day. And watch us, you know, and he was like, Yeah, but you’re touching my elevator. So
Matt Allred (03:27)
Hahaha.
Yeah, I get it. Yeah. When you told me you were doing that to to get money to surf, right? I mean, that was fueling the addiction.
Robert Schram (03:52)
I wanna make sure what happens.
So that was it, yeah.
I had a few older guys that I was lucky to grow up under here in Florida that were all surfers and construction was their way. So they would work heavy the year and then at summertime, we would all break out and take a couple weeks and go down to Costa Rica. So yeah, totally funded my way just to go to, just to surf.
Matt Allred (04:22)
Yeah,
no, that’s awesome. you still get out and surf? I guess that’s the big question.
Robert Schram (04:25)
I do
still try when I can, you know, now that I have two little ones, it’s more about getting them in the ocean. But I get my turn when I do.
Matt Allred (04:33)
Yeah, yeah,
that is awesome. I love it. I love it. was it that led you to, and I’m probably going to pronounce it wrong, but Cedes, like Mercedes, is how you pronounced it for me. Mercedes.
Robert Schram (04:40)
Yeah, thanks. No, you got it pretty good there Cedes
Yeah. So I would say five years ago, I started on with a company called Relayr working in IoT, you know, the Internet of Things for elevators.
And back then with Relayr, we did some great things. One, some good wards, especially around our dashboard. And then just over two years ago, while we were retooling the hardware, we kind of connected with Cedes and kind of started learning about their hardware.
And then it was kind of just a really a match made in heaven where the two companies were. And then Cedes bought us out, bought everything from Relayr, including myself and our whole back end team. And we were all blessed to come over to this company. It has been.
really just a great opportunity for all of us to continue what we were working on, but now continuing with world-class Swiss engineering and a company that brings 40 plus years of doing work that they do in this industry.
Matt Allred (05:50)
Yeah,
that’s fascinating. So you told me this 40-year Swiss engineering really started with a light curtain invented in a kitchen, which… I love it. So walk us through the origin story, right? And why was that such a breakthrough for elevator safety at the time?
Robert Schram (05:59)
That… Yeah, right? Yeah.
Yeah, so we kind of got to go back to the 80s, if we will. And during the time in the 80s, if you remember doors used to open and close, there used to be a gray bar that came down or came out of the door, which you would depress that bar and the two doors would open. But for people like my grandmother, especially, I if that thing hit her, she would be black and blue.
Matt Allred (06:32)
For sure.
Robert Schram (06:32)
So then
we said, okay, there’s gotta be a better way to do this. And, you know, the Schindler’s of the world, Otis’s of the world, right, were working. And I think Schindler came out with the first one that had basically infrared light at the bottom. And if you broke that beam, the doors would reopen.
Matt Allred (06:50)
Mm-hmm.
Robert Schram (06:50)
but it was
real finicky to like light bouncing off of the, know, out of the transoms and things. And, you know, it only had a beam across the bottom. So people putting their hands above, you know, it wouldn’t stop. Bayot, who created Cedes from Switzerland, was a photonics engineer. So he measures distance with light.
Matt Allred (07:04)
wouldn’t stop it. Sure.
Robert Schram (07:13)
And so what he was able to do was basically in his kitchen, rig up 36 independent infrared beams and then cover them in such a way that the ambient light wasn’t a problem. And lo and behold, he created one. And then I would say that came out in about 90-ish, 1990. And then…
it became a standard in the industry, light curtains from that point on. But it made it much safer for people, right? Entering and exiting the elevator, as those doors would close, you would break more beams. The doors would physically reopen without striking.
Matt Allred (07:49)
Right, right. That makes sense. And obviously that’s a big, it’s a pretty big leap from crash bars to light curtains. What would you say is kind of the next step in change in safety technology that maybe others of us haven’t considered yet?
Robert Schram (08:02)
Yeah. Well, mean, you know, we’ve been, you know, elevators, what, 100 years or so, right? 100 plus years. And it’s been mostly about the hardware, right? Rails, machines, controllers, doors, cables, things of that nature. And I really think the next wave or the most value is going to come from intelligence, right? So you’re going to get into more software, sensors and connectivity as a whole.
Matt Allred (08:08)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cool. OK.
Very cool. And you talked about, which I really liked, I think this is fascinating, unleashing the voice of the cabin. And so, what does that actually mean in practice? And how close are we to elevators that can truly communicate their own issues, right? Or say, hey, I’m feeling sick, I need some attention.
Robert Schram (08:44)
Yeah, mean, so it’s nothing new in the sense of controllers. Controllers, in a sense, have always been self-recovering. And the remote monitoring has kind of been built in there, right? Thyssen and Otis have been playing around it for a long time. But I think they look at more of what the fault is. And so when we say we want to unleash the voice of an elevator,
Matt Allred (08:51)
Uh-huh.
Robert Schram (09:04)
We want to do it from a sense that we’re almost, in our sense, we’re agnostic from the controller.
Matt Allred (09:11)
Mm-hmm.
Robert Schram (09:11)
right,
because that controller will give me the fault. But what we want to do is really not necessarily look at the fault, but we want to look at the behavior and understand what the elevator is doing. So maintenance becomes predictive rather than reactive. And so what we want to do and what we want to look at is, you know, so many elevators are still scheduled. You know, the service is still scheduled.
And you know, and that happens a lot of times after it breaks down. So it breaks down. Now they come in and do a service, right? Ba ba ba. We want the doors or the elevator to alert us to a door operator degrading or what ride quality degrading.
Matt Allred (09:40)
Yeah, yeah.
Robert Schram (09:51)
brake performance change right traffic patterns that are unusual and We want to do that from the sense of the cabin itself So while the cabin is traveling or while the doors are opening or closing we want to come and see that from that perspective So that’s why I say that’s how we’re you kind of unleashing the voice of the elevator You know
Matt Allred (10:12)
Sure,
Right, well obviously traditionally, most maintenance relied on technician showing up and listening to or observing or surveying the elevator. Do you feel like that model is becoming outdated and what does that look like?
Robert Schram (10:28)
Yeah, I mean, you know, I love the fact that we had technicians that could show up and ride and listen to an elevator. But even when I came in, it was a bit of a pet peeve of mine to hear that, you know, even back then, I think, you know, we had 50 elevators per tech, right? So a route had one, you know, one technician, he had 50 elevators. And then I kind of sat there and went, man, so he’s going to show up, he’s going to ride it, he’s going to listen to it, and then he’s going to prescribe what needs to be done. And just in my head, I thought,
Matt Allred (10:54)
Yeah.
Robert Schram (10:56)
God, I hope he had a good night’s sleep. I hope his wife wasn’t yelling at him outside the door as he’s running this morning or his kids are sick or just the noise of the world isn’t there. I just don’t understand how that’s the way we do it. So, we really wanna say that we wanna see people show up and be prioritized with data from the elevator to know what’s going on.
Matt Allred (11:22)
Mm-hmm.
Robert Schram (11:22)
so that we can see what the doors are doing and say, okay, this is what the doors have been doing the last seven days, because it may be 20 or 30 days before I’m back at this building. What has occurred and just going through a fault log doesn’t really give me that. So we really wanna see people change from, you know.
doing the prescribing from listening to it, from doing it from, this is what I see from the elevator itself.
Matt Allred (11:52)
Yeah.
Yeah. Well, help me understand. mean, it sounds like, on one hand, a lot of elevators get fixed once they break, right? And then it’s like, hey, that’s the big signal for us to show up and and try to get it back on. How much data do you have to have before you show up proactively and say, hey, this this thing’s squeaking, you know, maybe it’s 75 % broken, but not not broken. Right. So, you know, how do you make that determination that
you know, now it’s time to actually fix it before it breaks.
Robert Schram (12:20)
Yeah. So that’s where I think you have technicians that can be technicians. And the difference today is allowing technicians to be, you right now they’re, they’re route service technicians, right? What we want to see them is really become
route managers, like they should be managing their own route and managing it from a data sense ability, right? So that they get again, some prioritization to say, okay, I see this and now I know when or where, right? I should go, you know, and that’s what we wanna help develop is, when is something
Matt Allred (12:35)
Okay.
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Robert Schram (12:54)
and where is it occurring and when do I need to go there? Not necessarily the what, right? We want technicians still to be technicians, but they shouldn’t show up to a call and be blind.
Matt Allred (13:08)
Yeah, yeah, I hear you.
Robert Schram (13:08)
They
should show up and have an understanding of, this is where the elevator was. This is what the elevator was doing when this anomalous behavior occurred. Was it traveling up? Was it traveling down? Speed of those doors and things like that. So it’s really about prioritizing the technician and allowing him to become more of a manager of that route and that elevator by understanding the data.
Matt Allred (13:32)
Sure, And I can imagine,
I imagine they still get dispatched because the value of having that knowledge is being out in the field, but showing up and maybe it’s like a surgeon up at the operating room and this person just came in and here are all the vital signs and here are all the things, here’s all the data we can give you and then they can do exactly what they need to do versus riding it up and down three times and.
I don’t know how they diagnose, but it sounds like showing up and having enough knowledge that you can the repair.
Robert Schram (14:05)
Right, absolutely, exactly. And having more data for that, right, is going to really help them again and speed us up. I mean, I see, you know, callbacks taking two, three, you know, times just to figure out what went wrong when if you had data going there and knowing what to bring with you, right now we can really affect what we do.
Matt Allred (14:25)
Yeah, no, it’s cool. I’m just envisioning somebody’s on the route to their next, they got a 30 minute drive, they’re sitting in traffic and AI is sitting there informing them, okay, this is going on and the motor’s doing this and the squeaks on this floor and the door’s acting like this. And maybe that’s one way to speed up that process of bringing them up to speed.
Robert Schram (14:45)
Yeah, I mean, again, we send technicians to go to a building and the first thing they do is go to the controller, start to look down at all the faults that have occurred, clear that out. But they have one, typically one machine, one controller, but as that building grows, they have double the amount of doors. So now if we can prioritize to what doors are doing what.
Matt Allred (15:02)
Right, right.
Robert Schram (15:06)
we can really start and the more data we collect, the faster we can get to a predictive model. We’re not there today, but again, if you can the data, understand it, you can make a better…
prescription or prescribe what needs to be done on that elevator and then by the way I can track to see what I did if I tightened it to the left did it do this if I tighten it to the right did it do that now I can see that you know and and I as a service manager can say yes my technician went out I can see what he did affected the elevator both good or bad you know
Matt Allred (15:43)
Sure. Yeah, that’s cool.
Yeah, that’d be really cool. mean, kind of real time, know, maintenance and observation, all of the above. And you had said, you know, previously that you felt like the elevator industry is maybe 10 years behind adopting some of this and applying some of this technology. What would you say is holding it back from maybe adopting faster and, more of the benefits?
Robert Schram (16:04)
Yeah.
You know, historically, I think the elevator has been, the industry as a whole has been slow to adapt technology. I mean, largely due to like entrance, right? Entrance practices and culture, doing the things the way we’ve always been done or, always done it. I think many ISPs or the independent space was funded by skilled technicians, but they transitioned from, or into business from,
deep expertise, but I think they had little exposure to some of the tools. they, you know, they did it on their own and how they did it. And I think sometimes that prioritizes it or slows it down because, you know, the majors put out elevators that are so proprietary that then it takes a while for the independents to get the software and needs. And so I think,
as that landscape shifted, I think we’re trying to really capture that. But I think really the length of time or the slowness comes from, mostly due, I think, to the culture, if you will, in the industry.
Matt Allred (17:06)
Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, if it’s working well, for the contractors and the people who doing the service, then hey, let’s not mess it up and let’s not invest a bunch of money in unproven technology. There was no big push for it, I guess, is kind of what I was assuming.
Robert Schram (17:21)
Yeah,
I mean, that legacy mindset, right, is there. But I think the landscape is changing, right? And it’s shifting. So I think that founding generation, right, is starting to retire, the next generation coming in. You know, I think, right, you’ve got private equity investors. you have this driving of the introduction of the modern
Matt Allred (17:29)
I agree. Yeah.
Robert Schram (17:45)
products and platforms.
Right. So we’re recognizing, you know, predictive maintenance and remote monitoring, integrated workflows. And so we’re kind of at that inflection point, right. And, know, where the digital transformation is no longer like a future aspiration, but a present day, you know, imperative. And because of that, I think you start to slow the gap, if you will, between the amount of years. Right. So.
Matt Allred (17:57)
Yep, agreed.
Yeah, agreed.
Robert Schram (18:12)
You know, up to 2016, think everything, if you look at the codes, was mostly mechanical.
Matt Allred (18:18)
Mm-hmm.
Robert Schram (18:19)
And now you start to look at 2019, 2022, 2025, and it’s getting much more connected, right? Now we’re getting into much more digital security of the hoist way. Now we’re getting into two-way communication. so, you know, 3D door detection, all of these things are starting to transition us into a, you know, a much…
more connected world and so because of that we’re going to start to see the years shrink from adoption to adoption to adoption.
Matt Allred (18:52)
Yeah, that’s cool. mean, and it is interesting, right, to see how IoT is kind of taking over the world, if you will, along with AI,
Matt Allred (19:00)
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Matt Allred (19:22)
But I’m curious, you know, there does seem to be a little bit of tension between owners wanting transparency, but, you know, that could also expose elevator companies or, you know, some of the maintenance people, you know. How do you see that dynamic playing out as kind of the demand for, give us transparency, continues to roll out?
Robert Schram (19:41)
Yeah, I mean…
I think the conversation’s gonna shift, right? And it’s gonna shift from how much does the elevator cost to what does poor performance cost me, right? So you’re gonna need to show the service quality. You’re gonna need to track.
know, the technician
on the last visit. So did it solve the issue or is the anomalous behavior, still occurring? Response times, start to come into play. But I can, you know, today the amount of cost that goes into a building for an owner when the elevator doesn’t work.
is starting to play into the overall cost in these buildings, right? Or just going up in cost, right? Things aren’t getting less expensive for anybody out there. So I think, especially after COVID, you have so many buildings that just have never come back to, especially office spaces, right? That if I’m an owner trying to rent out a floor,
Matt Allred (20:22)
Sure, true, yeah.
Robert Schram (20:36)
I need to understand more about my building today to make sure I’m putting out the commercial, if you will, to get someone to come rent my floor.
And I need the data to know that information to, you know, properly go sell that floor or rent out that space. And the same goes for, you know, trying to gain at, you know, residential properties, trying to gain the proper tenants. see a lot of times in buildings where the tenants won’t even report the elevator being out because if they could show the elevator’s been out a week.
Hey, Mr. Owner, I haven’t had an elevator for a week. I’m paying X amount of dollars less on my rent because I had to walk the stairs. So they won’t tell you the elevator’s not working. And I see it in our own dashboards on elevators in certain metropolitan areas that I can tell they didn’t call the elevator. I’m calling and talking to the service manager and finding out, yeah, we definitely dispatched somebody.
Matt Allred (21:14)
wow, yeah.
Robert Schram (21:34)
but they won’t say it because they want to get money off their rent. right, that tension’s always gonna be there with that grading. But look, I mean, today I think the messaging out there is, you know, in the independent space is still like, we’re local, we’re small and we answer our phone. And it’s like, well, we’re all local. mean,
Matt Allred (21:37)
with the rent, right?
Robert Schram (21:54)
you know, Tisson’s still local, their shop is right up the street from yours. ⁓ None of them answer their phones because every time I call it goes straight to voicemail and then the voicemail is full. You know, our routes are no longer.
Matt Allred (21:58)
Sure, same business part.
Robert Schram (22:06)
what we used to challenge the majors on, right? Because that was the playback when I first started in selling maintenance was, hey, we have less units per tech, but now we’re growing into that 120 space per tech, and now you can’t say that. So yeah, there could be tension, but that’s how it’s all and how you adopt this as being something that can change you operationally.
Matt Allred (22:22)
Yeah, yeah.
Robert Schram (22:33)
We can stop running on arrival calls. can change how you dispatch a tech, therefore changing that labor rate, and that’s gonna help the tension conversation ⁓ because if I’m making more money.
Matt Allred (22:44)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I
like the way you said that. And I think it does. It has the potential to change the dynamic and maybe even create competitive advantages if used properly, right? If we’re monitoring and we’ve got all kinds of data, but we’re not looking at it, we’re not responding to it, well, then it’s, we might as well not have it, right? So, yeah, yeah.
Robert Schram (23:02)
⁓ Correct. Yeah, I
mean, we’ve definitely taken our system and said, you know, hey, this is a tool. If you don’t use the tool, right, then it’s just another tool that’s sitting in the the, you know, the chest there. So yeah, I think companies do have to take the mindset to change.
But I think we’re starting to see that. mean, the amount of times people have spent being firefighters and ambulance chasers, right, chasing that down elevator. You can only do it for so many years before you start to go, okay, I gotta think of a better way of doing this. Right.
Matt Allred (23:34)
Yeah, yeah, I agree.
Do you think some elevator companies may be at risk if they don’t adopt and respond to this kind of technology really kind of provide that extra level of proactive service? mean, curious what your thoughts are on that.
Robert Schram (23:50)
Yeah, I think the companies that think they’re in the elevator business may lose to companies that realize they’re in the uptime customer experience business.
Matt Allred (24:02)
I
like the way you said that.
Robert Schram (24:03)
Right? Because whoever controls the door intelligence, the door health, the door performance, the data controls, right? That’s the biggest source of callbacks. So if I can get all that and I can control the downtime and the customer pain, right? I’m gonna win more maintenance.
Matt Allred (24:20)
Your win. Yeah.
Robert Schram (24:22)
Right? Because when I go in to talk to you, it’s going to be about uptime and how I’m going to treat your elevator different than everybody else. Because I’m using tools that prescribe what needs to be done in conjunction with my, you know, 20, 30, 40 plus year technician who’s now going to do things that are different than what it’s been done. We’re not showing up to listen to your elevator. We’re going to know.
Matt Allred (24:45)
Yeah, yeah, right.
Robert Schram (24:48)
where things are and go from there. So I think that’s the change, right? It’s changing from the mindset of selling a box, right? This magical box of what you’re gonna magically do for them to, I’m gonna do it because of this.
Matt Allred (24:50)
Yeah, no, I love it. I love it. Yeah.
Yeah,
I like that. And what I can see is it also educates the, you whether the end user is actually asking for the data or the company is actually providing the data, they start to realize that, hey, there’s a way to be aware of that. for example, I mean, you shared an example of a building owner or building taking an elevator out of service without telling the company, right? And it’s like, okay, they need to be educated too, right? They can learn that,
You know, that’s not the time to do it. What did you say? Like four o’clock in the afternoon, they were taking their elevator down and.
Robert Schram (25:32)
Yeah,
in a major metropolitan city on a 28 story traction car, you know, now, now we start to question like a rope speed, you the weight of the car change, do I have to change the counterweight? You just can’t put that car in service. I mean, I remember being called to an elevator once, you know, years ago that they took out of service.
Matt Allred (25:37)
Mmm.
Robert Schram (25:51)
And then we came to see what was going on. And when the doors opened, here’s the sill. The floor was sitting almost that much. And they put in a new floor. It was above the sill. I’m like, it’s a tripping hazard. This can’t be, no. And they changed the weight of the car. mean, it was just, you know.
Matt Allred (26:01)
wow.
Right.
Robert Schram (26:13)
So then they had to get the company back. They had to the whole floor out. It was just a mess. So yeah, we want to be able to, at the end of the day, the elevator is owned by the building, right? And it’s their responsibility to ensure its service and how the people interact with the elevator.
Right. And we don’t see enough of that. And you know, phones and emergency communication, they should be taught on all these things. I mean, I constantly see where elevators are being held and the people are timing out the door operator.
Well, the wear and tear on that door operator, you now you can’t say the door operator is going to last if it’s constantly being, you know, timed out and torn, you know, in having issues and we can see it. So now we can direct facility managers to the time when that floor is. And I’ve caught a cleaning crew, you know, every day seven something in the morning, it hits the same floor and bottlenecks the building.
And so they were able to get a facility manager to go up there. And, sure enough, it was a cleaning guy talking to one of the people on the floor and, you know, had the cart in the door and, know, but we were able to say, hey, if you go up there right now, it’s being held, you know, and now they can go, but they can also see what floors are holding these, you know, the flow of the building, you know, up. And so.
you can share more information with the building and get them to understand what their role in this is. And that’s directing people how to use an elevator properly.
Matt Allred (27:38)
Absolutely. Yeah.
For sure, yeah, educating them and really just being more aware of what’s really going on and how does our interaction with it affect everybody in this building. So let’s talk a little bit more, you talked about 3D detection and you had talked about the idea that the elevator could recognize a hospital gurney and then express it to a certain floor. Tell me a little bit more about smart behavior and maybe some of these things that we should expect in the future.
Robert Schram (28:07)
Yeah. So as primarily a light curtain company, although we do lots of other things, building management and doors and entrances and things of that nature, light curtains have always been a staple for us.
So cab safe is our 2019 code compliant door reversal edge. It utilizes a time of flight in the transom of the elevator so that there are no blind spots and being able to pick up people either approaching the elevator or just passing the elevator so that it meets the code. And then cab sense is something that we’ll be bringing and cab sense is very cool. So cab sense is able to detect. imagine a hospital,
Matt Allred (28:26)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Robert Schram (28:48)
if you will, I’m on the second floor. I’ve got a gurney with a person in it. I got to get them up to the eighth floor. I run into the elevator with cab sense that elevator as I go through the sticks, if you will, of the door edges, it’s going to observe what went through it and understands what it is. And then we’ll automatically make the ride an express ride.
in where none of the other floors can call this particular elevator and it will take them directly to the eighth floor. ⁓ With our elevate in our light curtains with the IoT, we are really getting into the…
Matt Allred (29:16)
Yeah, that’s fascinating. Yeah.
Robert Schram (29:26)
time where we can understand what actually goes through the light curtains and actually print out. You today it’s only a 2D picture, but if you’re, you know, if someone’s holding the door and standing there and the whole elevator times out and then they go, well, we don’t know what happened. I can print out the picture of the guy holding and you can see it, him holding the door. Yeah. If you came to NAAC last year and
Matt Allred (29:30)
Mm-hmm.
Here’s a picture of the arm, right?
Robert Schram (29:52)
come to NAEC this year, we’ll have it again, where we did the YMCA or a conga line through it, and then everybody could see you on the screen as you walked through into the door of the elevator. So we’re really starting to get into that object recognition and really, we’ll really be able to…
Matt Allred (30:04)
my, wow.
Robert Schram (30:12)
change the environment. So coming next, right, we’ll understand the volume detection of the elevator. So, right, it won’t stop for new passengers. It makes that express ride. We’ll also be able to really
understand the behavior of the elevator. And we’re doing this brand agnostically through the door edges. So one of the advantages for an elevator company is, you know, we’ve had remote monitoring and these kinds of things through the controller. But if I’m Rob’s elevator company, it’s really hard to modernize my way so everything’s on a platform.
with us because it’s the door edge and as long as it’s an automatic door, right? Left hand center part opening, whatever it be, as long as it’s an automatic door, we can put a door edge on it. Now I can work through all these things, no matter the brand, the make, the model, the age of the elevator. And so now I can put everything onto one platform and share that. And so I think that’s where this smart behavior is gonna continue to.
Matt Allred (31:00)
Cool. Right.
Robert Schram (31:10)
evolve. ⁓
Matt Allred (31:11)
Sure, sure. And like you said, unleashing
the voice of the cab earlier, right? Just kind of more knowledge, what’s happening and how can we, what can we learn? don’t know everything we can learn yet because we’re just learning, but it is an exciting time to of that kind of together. guess as you zoom out and kind of look at IOT across buildings, whether it’s smart toilets, smart elevators,
Robert Schram (31:28)
Yeah.
Matt Allred (31:36)
What role do you see in Elevators playing like a fully connected building of the future?
Robert Schram (31:41)
Yeah, I think buildings are going to continue to become smarter and smarter buildings. mean, I can tell you now they want to put IOT on toilets. And they’re doing so. I think a hotel with 200 plus rooms. If they have a toilet that’s going and starting to run, they’re losing tons of money on that. Imagine now that times however many toilets there are.
Matt Allred (32:00)
Sure, sure.
Robert Schram (32:04)
want to start to see where money is going. So I think elevators we’re still the most important vendor a building has. You could catch a ride to the store, but not the top floor. The elevator has to work. What I think we need to do is though,
It shouldn’t be this black box or scary, you know, entity. needs to be its own space. The elevator, it should be comfortable. It should be stylish. It needs to fit the building’s facade, but it should no longer be right a commodity. It’s a strategic asset. And because of that, it needs to be maintained, right? Specific to the maintenance control program for that elevator.
And then, you know, we really should be helping our technicians by again, giving them data to go out there and work on a smart building with a smart elevator, right? And prescribe what needs to be because of the behavior of the elevator, not a schedule that says, well, I should be checking this because it’s, you know, X amount of months.
Matt Allred (33:06)
I mean, it feels like if you’re watching the data, then yeah, you’re gonna be there possibly beforehand, fix what needs to be fixed, and then it doesn’t have to crash. You’ve already got the part, you fix it, and you move on, and greater uptime, like you’d said earlier.
Robert Schram (33:20)
Sure, and bringing proposals to buildings with data that backs up the reason they should spend money changes your conversation with them as well, right? They’ll have a better sense that you’re bringing them something that truly needs to happen because have the data to support it.
Matt Allred (33:37)
Absolutely.
Yeah. Robert, anything else you’d like to share as we wrap up?
Robert Schram (33:42)
You know, the elevator industry as a whole is a phenomenal industry, right? We have phenomenal technicians doing, great work the amount of people that use elevators every single day. It’s still the safest means of transportation.
The uniqueness of elevators, it’s something new every day, because every elevator is different, right? The applications are different, the heights are different. And so it’s always an exciting time. And I think we’re really in an exciting time to allow the technology that’s been out there, really help your technicians and help the industry as a whole move to a predictive space.
And I think that’s the exciting part, right? We’re still able to say we’re growing in an industry that’s been around for over 100 years, but we’re still growing. And I think we’re growing every day. And that’s the great thing about being in the elevator trade is just every day is a growth opportunity.
Matt Allred (34:35)
Yeah, yeah.
For sure. So last question for you. If you were to talk to young Robert, right? Maybe he’s surfing that day and you were to give him some advice about, you know, being in the elevator space, what would you say to him? What kind of advice would you give your younger self or somebody else coming in?
Robert Schram (34:51)
Yeah, I think if you’re looking to be in something that’s going to challenge you, but give you opportunity to see the future, know, elevators are it. We’re running out land space to build. And so we’re gonna continue to build up, right? That’s the only thing that you can really say, I know for sure, right? We’re definitely gonna continue to build. We’re gonna continue to build up.
Matt Allred (35:06)
Sure.
Robert Schram (35:16)
And that’s gonna take people to do this industry. this is one of the only industries where I really think you can do and make your own course, right? You have the ability to come into this industry and there’s your trajectory can go any way you really want it to go. If you put the time in and, you know, kind of keep to the grindstone.
There’s just, you know, there’s no end to the opportunity. And that’s what I would tell people, right? If you want something that’s endless as far as the opportunities, this is the industry you want to go into.
Matt Allred (35:47)
Awesome, love that. Thank you so much for being with me today. I enjoyed the conversation and yeah, this is good stuff.
Robert Schram (35:53)
Thank you for having me. was pleasure to be here.
Matt Allred (35:56)
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