Dutch elevator software company Liftinsight used an application development platform from Siemens subsidiary Mendix to build an IoT application to reduce maintenance costs.

Called Liftmanager, the application has reduced Liftinsight’s maintenance costs by nearly a third and provides a single tool for maintenance workers and inspectors to enter and access elevator data such as registrations and maintenance details, and monitor elevator use in real time to pre-empt failures.

Elevators are a critical part of a modern building’s infrastructure and have evolved tremendously with technological advancements. Yet these advancements often are not reflected in the way they are serviced and maintained. Paper-based methods, such as individual ledgers, are still commonly used to track maintenance, inspections and usage. These ledgers are usually locked away, making them difficult to access, and handwritten ledgers may be illegible. Locating and deciphering ledgers consumes technicians’ time and makes jobs take longer.

Liftmanager removes these problems and digitises this process through the scanning of unique QR codes placed on each elevator. As a result, technicians and elevator managers in the field can easily access elevator maintenance history through the application on their mobile devices.

The application also provides Liftinsight with real-time insights into elevator usage through sensors on the elevator, allowing it to monitor when an elevator is due for routine maintenance. This eliminates the need for technicians to travel to elevators and manually check if maintenance is required.

The Liftinsight team chose to develop the application using Mendix’s low-code platform. Low-code is a visual development approach to application development that enables developers of varied experience levels to create applications for web and mobile, using drag-and-drop components and model-driven logic through a graphical user interface.

Low-code software development can be up to ten times faster than traditional software development. And the Mendix platform enabled Liftinsight to develop an enterprise-level application rapidly with little coding experience.

“Prior to being introduced to Mendix, we had been attempting to build an application through traditional coding,” said Liftinsight CEO Alderik Bos. “After 18 months, we were back at square one, without any final product. Moving our development onto Mendix’s low-code platform allowed us to create an application within three weeks and, most importantly, helped us solve the challenges our technicians faced in the field when maintaining elevators.”

Bos said the firm had seen a positive impact on technicians’ time and efficiency and reduced maintenance costs by a third.

“Our application is now the industry standard and is used by large international suppliers such as Bosch and Schindler,” he said.

Johan den Haan, chief technology officer at Mendix, added: “Liftinsight’s use of our platform highlights how low-code is helping to democratise digital transformation. By moving away from a more traditional development methodology and embracing low-code, the company was able to quickly design and build an application, with a clear understanding of the goal it wanted to achieve. This approach has created operational efficiencies within the company, reduced its costs and put Liftinsight at the centre of innovation within its industry.”