Interview with Detlef: field service associate for elevator emergency call technology at Bosch
Detlef
Technical sales support at Bosch Service Solutions
With Bosch since 1985.
Taking the elevator to the top – a career with Bosch
The official title of his place of work is "Administration Monitoring and Alarm Receiving Center and Elevator Emergency Call", but when you ask Detlef where he works, you get the more down-to-earth reply: "I work here at Bosch." Detlef is one of many long-standing Bosch associates who have spent their entire career with the company. In Detlef's case this is 40 years. Unlike his elevators that go down as well as up, his career has consistently progressed.
Not everybody can go into the shaft
Since his training in telephone and telecommunications engineering in the 1970s, he has remained loyal to the company. In the mid-1980s, the Frankfurt native moved to elevator emergency call technology, where he still works today.
He was there when elevators were first fitted with alarm systems in Germany. He remembers when he and his colleagues celebrated the tenth alarm system installed. Today there are over 15,000 elevators secured with Bosch technology throughout Germany. Detlef probably knows most of them personally. As the first elevator engineer at the Bosch Service Solutions monitoring center, he spent a great deal of time traveling the length and breadth of the country to perform and monitor system installations.
To prevent expensive failures, Bosch Predictive Maintenance will in future offer 24/7 monitoring of elevators with sensors. This technology will not only reduce the need for onsite deployment, but also save customers money. "At Bosch Service Solutions we are always literally one step ahead thanks to Predictive Maintenance for elevators – we can work out today what will happen tomorrow." Building operators will be able to hand over more or less full service responsibility for their elevator systems.
Detlef is currently working on the upgrade of alarm and emergency call systems throughout Germany. As part of the switch to IP-based telephony, all elevators are gradually being fitted with this technology, which means that every elevator has to be visited, decommissioned and converted manually on site. Just under 1,000 elevators are still to be updated by Bosch before the statutory deadline in 2018. All of these steps are part of the journey toward the ambitious future goal of the networked city. For Detlef and his colleagues there is still a great deal to do. Or, as Detlef describes it: "Ah, we'll get it done."