MIS 204 Management Information Systems

Otis Elevator is a subsidiary of United Technology Corporation. The company was the world leader in elevator sales and service. The company expanded its business in four geographical divisions: North America operation, Latin America operation, pacific area operation and European transcontinental operations.

The company’s business can be expressed as design, manufacture, installation and service of elevators and related products which includes escalators and moving sidewalks. Otis elevators’ Elevonic 401 was one of the most advanced elevators system. The market share increased rapidly in the time span.

The technology used was a microprocessor technology which the management believed to help shape the future of the service business. This report puts emphasis on the strategies that OTISLINE followed and the technique the company used in order to interact with their clients.

Introduction

John miller, director of the information system of Otis Elevator North America operation completed the future which was related to OTISLINE (Shete, Vitekar & Patil, 2016). OTISLINE, and computer application development improved the responsiveness to its service to its customer services. Otis had developed one of the best elevators which ranged from low rise to mid rise and high rise which was implementation using microprocessor technology which was thought to be a game changing plan for the company. This innovation as suggested by the management would help to build the future of the service being served by the company towards the client. OTISLINE implemented many technological advancement in order to give the best service to the customer. The company had started giving training to the dispatcher in order to give the best service. The dispatcher was trained in order to give the maximum output in order to deliver the service to the clients.

This report puts emphasis on the different aspect of the organization and the highlighting points which changed the market scenario with respect to the clients. The involvement of the microprocessor technology had changed the basic scenario of the technology involved with elevators. The main point of focus which is given to the report is the client feedback to the problem of the client.

Primary strategy followed by OTISLINE

The OTISLINE application is a part of NAO’s service management system. The NAO is an integrated database management system (Roberts et al., 2016). With OTISLINE, the service management system (SMS) was expanded which included all the maintenance activity with respect to elevators which included a service contract. Some applications such as service pricing estimate and new application such as billing was added as an extra. An OTISLINE dispatcher is responsible to access the SMS database and update the system with the help of a display attached to the IBM 3038 host computer (Mithas, 2016).

Strategy Involving Appropriate Role of Dispatcher

The OTISLINE application was designed in such a way that enables the dispatcher to respond to a client in less than a second of time. This is achieved by giving the dispatcher engineering short data base access path and a local display (Shete, Vitekar & Patil, 2016). The response time is an important design element because it was noticed that when more than 2% of transaction had longer than five seconds response time, the time taken to handle customer service request was nearly unacceptable. In order to attend the clients query and not missing any query the call dispatcher has to limit its information from the client and keep focus on getting the information from the client.

Strategy Involving Response Time and Performance

The primary strategy involved strengthens which involved response time and performance requirement. The clients was always aimed to give the maximum priority and the interaction with the client was given in such a way that the clients overall problem can be resolved quickly with no time lagging. With regards to the data centre operation the budget was increased significantly to support OTISLINE. Because of the strategic nature of the organization a large portion of the earmarked was supported by the information service budget (Shete, Vitekar & Patil, 2016).

Otis's position on the strategic grid both prior and post OTISLINE

Prior to OTISLINE

Prior to OTISLINE, the master case which includes building location, customer name and the contract information was contained in the SMS and other information that was use to control and monitor the services related to business, such as service price estimation data and the route information. With OTISLINE, the SMS was expanded which can handle all maintenance related issue regarding elevators are put under the service contract. With emphasis on the OTISLINE dispatcher it was taken care of the dispatcher respond to customer in less than one second (Mithas, 2016). The OTISLINE dispatcher where trained to be sensitive, courteous and efficient. During a call they were taught to get the information of the customer. This technique helped in identifies the building and the respective elevators during the subsequent call from the same customer. The customer got in contact with the company using a tool free number which connected them to North America customer care centre. The calls were either dispatched to a specific dispatcher or to the next available dispatcher. Calls that come on designated lines were moved at the head to the queue automatically (Roberts et al., 2016). The average number of calls that a dispatcher involved in conversation helped the company to judge the performance of the dispatcher. The system also included how long the customer had to wait for the dispatcher to get in touch with the customer. The dispatcher was given access to a display screen which contained certain question which gives them the search result of the building and the elevator. OTISLINE could recognize a building and elevator in four different ways:

• The telephone number
• The building identification number.
• The building name, city and state.
• The building address, city and state (Mithas, 2016).

In order of the search technique a no hit situation can also arise if the building and the elevator which is search is not found. In such a situation the dispatcher task is to assure the customer that the service mechanic would be dispatched and then search form an alternative technique in order to find the appropriate building (Roberts et al., 2016).

Prior to OTISLINE, the master case which includes building location, customer name and the contract information was contained in the SMS and other information that was use to control and monitor the services related to business, such as service price estimation data and the route information. With OTISLINE, the SMS was expanded which can handle all maintenance related issue regarding elevators are put under the service contract. With emphasis on the OTISLINE dispatcher it was taken care of the dispatcher respond to customer in less than one second. The OTISLINE dispatcher where trained to be sensitive, courteous and efficient. During a call they were taught to get the information of the customer. This technique helped in identifies the building and the respective elevators during the subsequent call from the same customer (Shete, Vitekar & Patil, 2016).

The OTISLINE service centre was staffed with dispatcher who where highly skilled. The new hires where involved in four to six months of training which covered:

• The overview of the software which is OTISLINE uses which is mainly the dispatching system
• The IBM display
• Listening to the customer and customer satisfaction skills.
• Appropriate courtesies and telephone salutations
• Operation training of the phone system (Gaiceanu et al 2017).

The objective of the training was to ensure that the dispatcher has the ability to handle customer calls in an efficient and effective manner (Peppard & Ward, 2016). The system changes are periodically informed to the dispatcher through a seminar and to discuss the criteria used to access the performance of the customer.

Post to OTISLINE

Otis elevators, a subsidiary of the united technology corporation are the leader in the elevator sales and service. Its business involves design, Installation, and service of elevators and related services (Joyce et al., 2017). By the end of nineteenth century the name of the company was well known and the name had become synchronous with the one of the most useful and dramatic inventions.  The name of the company (Otis) connected technology reliability, quality and leadership (Bhattacharya & Roy, 2017). Since the elevator which was made by the company was considered to be best the customers were willing to pay premium for the product. The company involved in three types of elevators:

• Otis hydraulics: This type of elevators where used for low rise building which can be up to 6 stories.
• Otis Geared for mid rise building: This type of elevators where used for 24 stories buildings.
• Otis Gearless for high rise: This type of elevators can be used for a high rise structure or building (Liu, 2017).

Otis has been most successful in selling elevators of high rise structure which included large building which required customized elevators for example atrium elevators or the elevators which required the state of art elevator technology (Liu, 2017). The Otis elevators where preferred by the customers because of the highly regarded service organization.

With the invention of the microprocessor technology the outdated mechanical elevators transformed the whole design of the elevators. Among the many elevators that the company manufactured the OTIS elevator elevonic 401 with three microprocessor based control system was considered one of the best products and one of the most advanced elevators (Galip et al., 2017). The microprocessor technology enabled Otis elevator North America Operation TO increase its market share to a significant amount. It was estimated that the technology (microprocessor) would help to shape the future of the company.

OTIS Elevonic 401

OTIS Elevonic 401 was one of the first elevator control system which could synthesis speech as an option, security system and information system (Toutaoui, 2017). It was the first elevator to install a weight sensor which could put full cars in mode of express. The Otis Elevonic 401 was succeeded later by Otis Elevonic 411M and Oris Elevonic 411. Elevonic 401 control hardware involved integration of three microprocessor basic based control units (Mahesh, 2017). It included

1. Group Controller: it is used making decision dispatching and call assignments.
2. Car controller: to govern the operation and motion of the car.
3. Cab controller: it is used to interface with hardware control of the car, communicating with the data of the cab for example car calls, passenger load with the controller of the car, controlling panel speech interface of the car operation, the coded secure entry and the visual display function (Ahn , Lee & Bahn, 2017).

Conclusion

It can be concluded from the report that the company’s main motive was to reach the expectation of the client by delivering them the best service. The implementation of the microprocessor technology was one of the key aspects which helped the company to excel in its field. The company apart from the service also trained the call dispatcher so that the dispatcher could give the best result in case of any doubt or problem being faced by the customer. Special type of training was given to the dispatcher so that they can attend each and every client and clear their doubts. The company always implemented new technology in order to keep themselves in an advanced position with respect to the other competitors. The OTIS Elevonic 401 was one of the best elevators which included the recent technological advancement like control speech interface pane, car calls and many other extra features that the elevator industry had not seen earlier.

References

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Galip, F., Gul, K., Ince, I. F., & Sharif, H. (2017). An Automatic System for Elevator Monitoring. International Journal of Scientific Research in Information Systems and Engineering (IJSRISE), 1(2).

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Joyce, M., Chapman, A., Sakai, O., Stanley, J. A., Jayachandran, V., & Louis, B. S. (2017). U.S. Patent No. 9,592,993. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

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Liu, Y. (2017). The Moderating Effects of Network Centrality between IT Initiatives and Firm Performance: An Empirical Study. GSTF Journal on Computing (JoC), 5(2), 63.

Mahesh, M. (2017). Analysis of elevator drives energy consumptions with permanent magnet machines. International Journal of Process Systems Engineering, 4(2-3), 151-161.

Mithas, S. (2016). Digital Intelligence: What Every Smart Manager Must Have for Success in an Information Age. Penguin UK.

Peppard, J., & Ward, J. (2016). The strategic management of information systems: Building a digital strategy. John Wiley & Sons.

Roberts, R., Ginsberg, D., Chevva, K. R., & Schmidt, W. T. (2016). U.S. Patent Application No. 15/214,648.

Shete, O. M., Vitekar, M. A. A., & Patil, M. A. N .(2016) Design & Control of an Elevator Control System using PLC.

Toutaoui, M. (2017). U.S. Patent No. 9,580,276. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.