MAJOR PROJECTS
KONE , one of the global leaders in the elevator and escalator industry , was founded in 1910 . Its objective is to offer the best People Flow ® experience by developing and delivering solutions that enable people to move smoothly , safely , comfortably and without waiting in buildings in an increasingly urbanising environment . Providing industryleading elevators , escalators and innovative solutions for modernisation and maintenance , KONE have been committed to understanding the needs of its customers in various segments for the past century . In 2013 , KONE had annual net sales of € 6.9 billion and at the end of the year over 43,000 employees . KONE class B shares are listed on the NASDAQ OMX Helsinki Ltd .
KONE ’ s UltraRope and steel rope
CG : Tell me about the rope ’ s development : When did it begin and what was the journey to delivering the product successfully ? Johannes de Jong : While elevators have enabled the rise of city skylines , the technology had reached its height limit : elevator travel distances of more than 500 meters are not feasible as the weight of the ropes themselves becomes so large that more ropes are needed to carry the ropes themselves . KONE is constantly looking at ways to improve the technology , to find better solutions that improve the overall People Flow ® experience while also cutting energy consumption . KONE UltraRope TM responds to the challenges of enabling longer vertical travel distances and reducing energy consumption . Hoisting rope is a component whose weight increases as travel distance increases , and this has been one of the limiting factors .
We wanted to find ways of reducing the weight of the ropes and started looking at alternative materials . We benchmarked solutions from other industries and came across carbon fiber technology , which has already been used to reduce
16 November 2014