Schindler Lifts – Quality Employees Create Quality Customer Experience
Schindler Lifts manufactures, installs, services and modernizes elevators, escalators and moving walks for almost every type of urban infrastructure, from low-rise residential buildings to commercial and high-rise towers.
For three consecutive years (from 2011 to 2013), Schindler made Forbes Magazine’s list as one of the 100 Most Innovative Companies. And as structures continue to challenge the skyline, the company becomes more and more essential.
Schindler is a global company with more than 47,000 staff members. Its operations began in Singapore in the 1960s. Singapore operations include 370 technical and office employees who give the very best to meet their customer’s needs.
Schindler's present-day success is driven by its commitment to traditional core values such as customer service, quality and safety, combined with its key strengths of creativity and innovation to produce intelligent solutions in response to its customers' needs.
People management
“At Schindler, we prefer to identify and attract talent at a very early stage in their professional lives,” said Hugo Martinho, managing director.
The company is very clear about their goals when it comes to the people they hire. They are considered a preferred employer despite the challenges the entire elevator and escalator industry face with recruiting young talents, and work hard to maintain the image.
The company participates in campus recruitment opportunities and job fairs, which allows them to take the time to narrow the profile of people for whom they are looking. Great candidates are internationally minded (willing to live abroad and have mastery of more than one language), achievement oriented and have strong leadership skills.
Schindler operates their business with best practice and people in mind. Each certification level the company has in their certification program comes with a different pay grade, allowing employees to be paid for that they are worth. The company also supports motivational events and weekly activities to promote a healthy work/life balance within the organisation.
Martinho believes that both challenging and supporting each employee is important to their growth within the company.
“The ‘ups and downs’ of this developmental road usually lead to very committed and engaged employees, who in the process learn about our business – they learn by doing,” said Martinho.
Martinho’s own experiences at the company reflect the Schindler’s culture well. He started working there in 1997, and took on exciting and different responsibilities every two to three years. With the chance to work in both country and regional positions, he was able to take on operational and functional duties spread out over six countries.
“This is the true essence of Schindler, and in fact supports its stated values: commitment to people development,” Martinho said.
Technological advances
The innovation, manufacture and maintenance in the field of moving people is evolving and growing faster than ever. Urban mobility is becoming increasingly important as cities grow larger and buildings rapidly reach new heights. More and more people are using lifts, escalators, moving walkways, and the like to get from point A to point B. Today with greater demand for efficiency and better technology available, Schindler is staying on the cutting edge.
Examples of Schindler innovations include the first patent for elevators without a machine room; the Miconic 10 destination control system; its successor, Schindler ID, incorporating personalized access control; and the third-generation system Personal Occupant Requirement Terminal (PORT) Technology, which is revolutionizing the traffic and security access philosophy in buildings and opens up previously inconceivable possibilities for developers and architects.
PORT Technology
The PORT Technology is the latest generation of transit management system. It integrates efficient traffic management and a host of powerful access, user-friendly operation, excellent personalised service, communication, security and energy saving features.
The basis of the system is that it groups passengers going to the same or nearby floors in the same elevator. This cuts down on the time needed to reach a destination because there are less stops along the way. The system is able to increase traffic efficiency in a building by as much as 30 percent as compared to conventional elevator systems.
PORT Technology provides buildings with the ability to cleverly increase traffic-handling efficiency, as evident in international landmark buildings such as the International Commerce Centre in Hong Kong, HSBC in Singapore, Heron Tower in London, Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt, The Crescent in Dallas, Hyatt Regency in New Orleans or Barangaroo South in Sydney.
PORT ensures each journey is customised to meet individual requirements, whether it is more walking time, longer door opening time or more space for passengers with special needs. Users can simply tap their pre-programmed access cards on the PORT system on a turnstile gate or stand-alone PORT terminal. Within less than a second, the system is able to calculate the swiftest route and assign the appropriate elevator to the user. It also displays a list of destinations to which the user has access to on a vivid color display touch screen.
During non-peak hours, the Energy Control Option (ECO) mode sets several elevators into standby or sleep mode. This prevents elevators from making an unnecessarily large number of trips to transport only a few passengers.
An eye towards the future
Schindler won the contract for the Marine One project in Singapore, which includes two 34-storey luxury residence towers, for which elevators will need to be supplied. Construction is expected to be completed in 2017.
The company is also involved in the Changi Airport Terminal 4 project, supply 58 elevators, escalators and moving walks.
They plan to continue to offer top-quality products that feature the latest technology, to ensure customers enjoy the most efficient building transportation solutions. Schindler’s proven Schindler 7000 high-rise elevator, the PORT Technology and the most recently launched Schindler 5500 elevator will also continue to strengthen their presence in Singapore.
