WITTUR Industrial Equipment case study

Wittur, a leading manufacturer of elevator components, modules and systems, faced a challenge following a series of acquisitions. The company needed to leverage the massive amount of diverse data across its globally-located plants and to increase part reuse. As it acquired companies and established production plants and sales organizations around the world, Wittur found itself faced with a diverse IT environment that prevented its employees from easily finding and leveraging all of its information. Data was stored in different legacy SQL databases each with their own material codes, norms and structure, which had to be sifted through individually. This was extremely time-consuming. Another challenge was to reduce the number of duplicate parts in its system. The engineers were having difficulty finding existing parts for new projects, so they preferred redesigning them, even though, in many cases, a similar part existed. This continuous duplication of parts required additional storage space. It also drove up costs as redesigning a part includes R&D, manufacturing, testing, logistics and inventory, all activities that could be avoided if they could just find an existing part to fit the bill.

Wittur is a leading global supplier of components, modules and systems for the elevator industry. The company started out in 1968 as a manufacturer and distributor of elevator swing doors and experienced steady growth since then, both organically and through acquisitions. Wittur manufactures a wide range of elevator components from sophisticated mechatronic mechanisms for the cabin and landing doors to other components that include gearless drives, slings, safety gears, cars and braking systems. The company focuses on comfort and safety when designing its products. Wittur's customers are global elevator installers that include Kone, Otis, Schindler, Hitachi, and ThyssenKrupp Elevator as well as smaller independent installers operating on a more local scale. One of Wittur’s strengths is its ability to accurately analyze market trends, which enables it to anticipate its customers’ needs for innovative products.