KONE Corporation, trade press release, October 30, 2013
KONE, a global leader in the lift and escalator industry, celebrates its annual People Flow Day today.
During the day, close to 1,000 KONE employees in more than 30 countries around the world will act as researchers and visit more than 100 sites to get closer to customers and building users. Through this ethnographic study, KONE gains a deeper understanding of customer needs and the user experience in practice.
This year, the theme of the event is safety as it is an integral part of KONE's strategy and a cornerstone of our business. With millions of people around the world using escalators, lifts, autowalks, and automatic building doors supplied or maintained by KONE, the topic affects us all.
"Safety is of utmost importance to us, and we constantly strive towards achieving our ultimate goal of zero accidents by paying rigorous attention to our design, manufacturing, installation, and maintenance processes," says Tomio Pihkala, Executive Vice President of Safety, Quality and Installation, KONE Corporation. "People Flow Day is a great example of how we can make our safety culture even stronger by engaging our people. It is also a great opportunity for us to listen to our customers and end users and educate them on the safe use of equipment," he adds.
The year 2013 marks the fourth time KONE is organizing People Flow Day, with our centennial year 2010 being the first.
KONE employees from around the world will meet with customers to hear their views on safety at sites as diverse as key transport hubs, shopping malls, and residential buildings. The KONE researchers will also observe and interview people as they navigate their way through the buildings to spot common unsafe practices and to help bust some elevator and escalator related.
The valuable data obtained during the event will be passed on to KONE's research and development teams with the future objective of developing new solutions. KONE regularly conducts end-user studies to test the usability of solutions in different building environments.
For further information, please contact:
Anne Korkiakoski, EVP, Marketing & Communications, KONE Corporation, tel. +358 204 75 4775
Read more about People Flow Day: www.kone.com/pfd
About KONE
KONE is one of the global leaders in the elevator and escalator industry. The company has been committed to understanding the needs of its customers for the past century, providing industry-leading elevators, escalators and automatic building doors as well as innovative solutions for modernization and maintenance. The company's 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 urbanizing environment. In 2012, KONE had annual net sales of EUR 6.3 billion and around 40,000 employees. KONE class B shares are listed on the NASDAQ OMX Helsinki Ltd in Finland.