Aufzüge und Fahrtreppen - IMU Institut

now also applied in China, Australia, Africa,
South America and Eastern Europe.
The scope of the term innovation should
not be restricted simply to that of technical
product innovation. Alongside the
products themselves, new forms of services,
technical processes and organizational
structures also belong under the
heading of innovation. Consequently the
extended version of the Industry Report
looks not only at fundamental technical
innovations such as the machine roomless
lift, but also at product innovations
in the service sector and process innovations
in production and organization. The
broader heading of innovation also includes
issues such as on-demand maintenance,
modularized maintenance, remote
diagnosis, integral production systems,
standardization and modularization as
product strategies and so on.
Lift construction SMEs in a
process of adjustment
Like the Big 4, there are a large number of
small and medium-sized enterprises active
in the industry who are also in the
throes of restructuring processes. These
are moved largely by the ever more prevalent
predative competition in the new
installation and modernization business,
and also in the service sector. Tough competitive
pressure and a process of concentration
have been making their presence
felt in the industry for years. A particularly
damaging development for lift
construction SMEs was the movement of
the Big 4 towards standardization. This
sealed their domination of the volume
market, helped also by the advent of MRL
concepts and the decline of the hydraulic
lift. This trend has forced many lift construction
SMEs into a decline over recent
years, which in many cases ended in a
major corporate crisis. Small and medium
sized enterprises had no alternative but
to respond, for instance by focussing
more intensely on the niche strategies or
streamlining and outsourcing production,
often in the context of specialization
on individual components and the
increased external sourcing of other
parts.
Standardization and modular systems
have now become an indispensable fact
of life also for small and medium sized lift
constructors. The larger players in this
sector generally have their own “standardized
basic range”. Smaller lift constructors,
by contrast, frequently tend to
turn to complete installation suppliers
among the component manufacturers.
An ever greater number of component
manufacturers are following the market
trend for purchasing everything they
need from a single one-stop source and
evolving into system suppliers. However,
modular systems are only one side of the
coin: The other at least equally important
side, particularly among small and medium
size lift constructors, is the manufacture
of custom-produced lifts.
Lift construction SMEs are generally specialized
in a specifi c region (“regional top
dogs with a good reputation and image”)
and/or have strategically aligned themselves
to specifi c fi elds (niche strategy).
Among these enterprises, particularly
those with their own production capacity
or with a relatively high vertical range of
production, tend to concentrate on oneoff,
bespoke solutions. Their speciality
lies either in areas such as batch size one
production, or they gain a reputation in
specialist areas such as panoramic lifts,
ships’ lifts, inclined lifts etc. In some cases,
this type of niche strategy constitutes
a primary business unit which is supplemented
by standard lift construction as
secondary mainstay. All in all, the fortunes
of many lift construction SMEs are
determined by their customer proximity.
They benefi t from extreme customer focus
and an enhanced capacity to respond
to individual customer requirements and
enable detailed specifi cation of the product.
Their benefi ts also include their fl exibility,
their capacity for fast response and
their reliability. Another point in their favour
is their use of qualifi ed sales staff
acting in the capacity of technical advisors
who are able to directly address any
requested modifi cations and integrate
these into the product design.
Component manufacturers
A sector of the lift and escalator industry
which is gaining increasingly in importance
is that of the component manufacturers
and full range suppliers. The greater
the reduction in the vertical depth of
manufacture among traditional producers,
the higher the proportion of the production
processes taken on by component
manufacturers, which are becoming
established increasingly on both a European
and worldwide basis. One starting
point for the development of the component
industry were the international production
concepts and component specialization
strategies of the Big 4. The independent
component manufacturers
initially concentrated on individual parts
such as doors, hydraulic drive systems,
controls and so on. Among some component
producers, there is a noticeable
move towards the role of system supplier.
For some years already, supply companies
already existing in the lift construction
sector have been moving increasingly towards
the supply of construction kits and
system solutions reaching well beyond
their original supply sector. This type of
full component range supplier has succeeded
over recent years in achieving a
signifi cantly greater market presence.
There are now a whole series of full range
suppliers who offer for instance small lift
installation fi rms (without their own
planning department) entire lift installations
complete with documentation.
Trends in employment and
working conditions
The number of jobs provided by the lift
and escalator sector is receding, largely
due to the plant closures of recent years.
Job cuts are the logical consequence of
the demographic shift in manufacturing
over recent years, in particular in the production
sector. For this reason alone,
there is an unmistakable trend under way
towards a higher proportion of white collar
workers, not only over the industry as
a whole but also on a plant-related basis
within the remaining producing locations.
Alongside redundancies as a result
of closures, among the Big 4 there has also
been a creeping cutback of jobs in
many areas. A distinction must be made
among the installers: In purely quantitative
terms based on the number of jobs,
the employment level appears to have remained
steady over recent years seen
across company boundaries. However,
there has been an immense shift here in
terms of the quality of working conditions:
The number of new lift installers
have been drastically reduced among the
key players, and their function largely
farmed out to subcontractors under less
favourable working and pay conditions.
36 LIFT-REPORT 33. Jahrg. (2007) Heft 6