#1 Futureproofing Lift Safety: Digitalization, 2G Shutdown & Industry Innovation with Shawn Gabor

00:00:00: Denise Wenzel So here's Lifts and Leaders the Inter Lift podcast and I'm your host Denise Vencil. And today we're talking about something that connects and also protects people every day. And that's kind of let's say it lifts safety and all features we need for a safety lift. Right. My guest is Sean Gabor. And Sean represents mem Co by Avaya and the company.

00:00:28: Denise Wenzel That has been synonymous with trust reliability and safety in the elevator elevator industry since if I look for it right, 1971 already and, yeah, they are based, in the west of London originally and yeah, that they develop and producing intelligent communication detection systems for lifts and, yeah, their mission is simple to make vertical mobility safe and smart and seamless.

00:01:02: Denise Wenzel So Sean, welcome to Lifts and Leaders. How are you?

00:01:06: Shawn Gabor Thanks, Denise. Thanks for welcoming me here. And thanks for introducing the company in this white area. So, I think all of the things are said about our company. And I'm happy to be here.

00:01:21: Denise Wenzel Okay. So we can finish the podcast. That's enough with everything. Thanks a nice.

00:01:25: Shawn Gabor Day.

00:01:25: Denise Wenzel No. No way. Sean, we want to, first of all, your personal introduction because, we really we're really excited to know more about you personally and what brought you into the lift industry. And. Well, on the other hand, maybe there was a key moment or a project that sparked your passion for lift safety. Take us with you into your history.

00:01:53: Denise Wenzel Yeah, it's your story. Maybe it's kind of a history, I don't know.

00:01:57: Shawn Gabor Yeah, yeah, it is some kind of a story. Yes it is, but it didn't start in the lift industry. So I started in complete other areas and I went to the lift industry. It's pretty easy over headhunter. So I was in this recycling industry, and I tried to find a new opportunity for me, to increase my knowledge to to have better approach inside markets and all this stuff.

00:02:24: Shawn Gabor So, I went to an headhunter, and he introduced me to Avaya, and now I, I'm here since nine and a half years. I like this company a lot. They like me, hopefully. So, and one of the, the most interesting stuff happened to me in this company is, they increased my level to a country sales manager, and now I have a white, white view inside an international company.

00:02:57: Shawn Gabor So we are presented worldwide all over the world. I talked to product management, I talked to marketing. I talked to sales directors. I talked to my team, of course, in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. So we have a back office in C set in Czech Republic. We we produce most of our stuff. So this is the central plan we have.

00:03:21: Shawn Gabor And, for me, the opportunity was to get inside an international company and know all the stuff all around the world. I'm happy to be here.

00:03:30: Denise Wenzel Yeah. So you work for a wire? Almost decade. You just mentioned nine and a half years. So was there, a milestone, something like that, that really shaped your professional journey the most that you remember the most?

00:03:47: Shawn Gabor Yeah, indeed. It was, the promotion to the country sales manager. So I started as a sales account manager. So I was responsible for several accounts, several areas and in several accounts in these areas. And the promotion was was the most, most exciting stuff for me, to be honest. Now I'm responsible for Germany, Austria, Switzerland and for Eastern Europe, and I coached the team.

00:04:11: Shawn Gabor I am able to, to get a lot of knowledge from them. And, we are such a great team, to be honest, and I like to work with them. And this is we are just like a big family.

00:04:23: Denise Wenzel Wow. So you have to be an extroverted person when you work as a sales manager with such a huge team. And yes. Yeah.

00:04:32: Shawn Gabor Yes. Definitely.

00:04:33: Denise Wenzel Okay. So to you person, you're not the introverted kind of person.

00:04:36: Shawn Gabor Do you think I am?

00:04:38: Denise Wenzel No, no, I saw your LinkedIn profile. So you are the frontier here the videos and you talk to customers, you talk to your team and yeah, you're really, I post a lot and that's exciting. And that's really fascinating also. Yeah.

00:04:50: Shawn Gabor Yeah. So we want to be presented all over and we want to be visible, in all the areas, of course.

00:04:58: Denise Wenzel Yeah, you do, you do. But for listeners who do not know mem co by by yet. So what's the philosophy behind the company. Tell us in your own words please.

00:05:08: Shawn Gabor It's indeed, as you introduced in the beginning connecting and protecting people. So

00:05:16: Denise Wenzel It's these are only buzzwords. Fill them with life for us. Okay.

00:05:20: Shawn Gabor So there are two areas where we are active with connecting and protecting people and what we try to do, is to do, to utilize all this stuff. So to make people travel with elevators more safe when they travel with elevators, when to step inside elevators. And digitalization is one of the the main words we work towards as I think in future, the lifts will will be more digital than they are.

00:05:50: Shawn Gabor So we're talking about 32 years old lifts at the average in Germany. So it's a very old style. And to, to push them towards a digital digitalization, it makes things so easier for lift companies, for the people using the lifts, for maintenance. It's the whole bubble around the lift. It's getting more, more easy, more safe, more reliable.

00:06:17: Denise Wenzel So in your company, which developments are also strategic steps in the recent years have had the biggest impact. You just mentioned the digitalization. There are a lot of old lifts, especially in Europe, Germany. So kind of yeah, special digital developments, for example, AI is actually integrated in many ways. So what is it in your company?

00:06:46: Shawn Gabor So when we talk about lifts and the company I work for with mam Co, digitalization is the most interesting part taking place in the last year and to be honest, so we sit on site went down to 10% in our area with digitalization. So it helps a lot, to put the technician time down to help them save money, even though they're much safer on site with the lifts using lifts.

00:07:17: Denise Wenzel

00:07:17: Shawn Gabor Okay. But digitalization is definitely the right word for it.

00:07:20: Denise Wenzel And okay. So that's a lot okay. It's the technology and the innovation. You really believe that will shape the future of lift safety with sensors. Or is it more real time data or is it predictive maintenance. What is it in your case it is.

00:07:37: Shawn Gabor These are a lot of words you heard, you hear around the lifts a lot. But, to be honest. So digitalization needs movement. And elevator industries are very slow moving towards new technologies. And all the stuff around, is changing. So just as an example, but to, to shut down in two and a half years from the networks and networks in Germany, no more lift will be able to send out an emergency call equipped with the two key generation module inside.

00:08:11: Shawn Gabor So you need to switch it to a 4G module. And we are talking about 350 to 400,000 units in Germany. So it's a massive amount of lifts being on a old fashioned technology and you need to move them forward. And our approach is to try to do the very best to do this as easy as possible, as simple as possible for the technicians and as fast as possible.

00:08:36: Shawn Gabor So you might imagine 250,000 lifts. You need to change chairs and modules inside these lifts. You need a lot of manpower and if they need one day per lift, it's not possible to change it.

00:08:51: Denise Wenzel If you look at the markets, especially your markets here in the region, so what are of course, we have a lot of challenges still. But what are the biggest opportunities right now?

00:09:02: Shawn Gabor We have indeed to shut down of the two G network in 2028 from Vodafone and from Telecom. So both decided to shut down the 2G network. And as I told you, a 350 to 400,000 lifts are equipped with old fashioned 2G modules inside. So these need to be switched over to 4G. And this is the opportunity and the challenge for all the lift companies, if not for all the and the challenge behind is also to get, all the stuff like 4G chips for the production to scale the production up in this high and in my opinion, our companies able to do this.

00:09:44: Shawn Gabor Definitely.

00:09:46: Denise Wenzel Cool. So and if you look ahead, let's say the year, 2045 and what do you imagine? How will the lift industry have evolved? So how will it look like.

00:10:01: Shawn Gabor From my perspective, hopefully retired, to be honest.

00:10:06: Denise Wenzel To you personally.

00:10:07: Shawn Gabor To me personally. Yeah. So I will have and I.

00:10:10: Denise Wenzel Will your younger colleagues do that and how will they work? How will they hopefully safety and lifts hopefully.

00:10:18: Shawn Gabor Ask before I advise afterwards as a consultant. Yeah. So, I think the lift industry will be much more digital with much more sensors inside the lifts. So I think you need a lot of, a big amount of data sent out from lifts to different platforms to clouds to, to monitoring to, to the safety stuff behind to make sure they work very safe and reliable.

00:10:49: Shawn Gabor I think digitalization is definitely the main world, in 20 years. But 20 years is a lot of time too. Yeah, it's still long.

00:10:58: Denise Wenzel Yeah, yeah. If you look what happened within the last five years or something like that, or even I just came back from another, tech conference and there they mentioned that 80% of the data we produced within the last two years of the amount of data we produced within the last two years, since we use artificial intelligence, since we have sensors, clouds, as you just mentioned.

00:11:26: Denise Wenzel So data digitalization is growing so strong. It's unbelievable. And yeah, I think we can imagine how where where we will be in 2045.

00:11:38: Shawn Gabor Yeah, I remember a big company in Germany. Doing records of total movement sounds. Yeah, for a long time. And I don't know what happens afterwards. So every night they send out a wave file to a server.

00:11:55: Denise Wenzel But why did they recorded it?

00:11:57: Shawn Gabor Just to to find out when the when the sound is changing the door might be broken or something like that. So this was a big amount of data, what they did inside a server. And I'm not really sure if it helps to be honest, but I think this is this is the direction it goes to have sounds, to have vibrations, to have sensors inside the lifts, to hear what the lifts do.

00:12:22: Shawn Gabor And it's 60% of the of the lift damages are indeed inside the door movement area. So to concentrate more about the doors at the end trusting.

00:12:33: Denise Wenzel So I have to listen carefully when I lift. So what can I hear?

00:12:38: Shawn Gabor Hopefully you don't have to think about the safety inside an elevator using it.

00:12:43: Denise Wenzel I hope so too. Let's jump back into yeah, that entrepreneurial spirit and spirit means. Yeah, just what we mentioned before. You're leading teams across multiple countries. That requires a mix of leadership and just a spirit. You also bring with you for your company. And what does this, entrepreneurship, the spirit you bring to your to your people mean to you in this industry context, what makes it special?

00:13:16: Denise Wenzel And do you think other sectors compared to the lift industry, can learn from it.

00:13:24: Shawn Gabor So regarding entrepreneurship inside the company, it's always important to have an open dialog about technology, about customers, about the customer's needs, what they want to have inside their lifts. I think entrepreneurship in, in total means we need innovation. We need new ideas, new technologies, perhaps from entrepreneurs coming from other areas and other industries, for example, the automotive industry or something like that.

00:13:57: Shawn Gabor And talking about this, some industries can learn from the list industry about safety, reliability. Definitely. These are two of the words I would recommend to every other company. What we could learn is, to learn about sensors. I think sensors is most of the interesting things out of car industry for example, automotive industry and perhaps, how to interpret all this data.

00:14:28: Shawn Gabor So the one thing is to collect a lot of data. And the other thing is to work with the data.

00:14:34: Denise Wenzel Absolutely. To make them accessible and to work with them. Yeah.

00:14:38: Shawn Gabor Definitely. And what, what comes out of it.

00:14:44: Denise Wenzel If you could given advice to young professionals who want to start a career in the elevator industry, what would it be.

00:14:54: Shawn Gabor Two points from my side. So first of all, visit training a basic training about elevators. So there are a lot of, companies providing these trainings, for new guys inside the lift industry. And on the other side. And I think this is very important, go outside in the field with technicians and feel their pain on site.

00:15:18: Shawn Gabor

00:15:19: Denise Wenzel Is there a lot of pain when you go outside?

00:15:22: Shawn Gabor Yeah, this is the problem. So the the challenge is if you develop something, it might be a good solution, but you don't know if the technician has a good solution behind it or if he has a lot of pain about, behind it, installing some units or something like that. So we always try to, to be near the technicians to feel, what do you need to you do your job properly and fast.

00:15:52: Shawn Gabor What what do you need to. Yeah. To be safe inside the lift. For the users too.

00:16:01: Denise Wenzel Is there any key message, current project, from your company you'd like to highlight to our listeners from Lyft and leaders of course.

00:16:11: Shawn Gabor Yeah. 2G to 40 switch. We, we try to do this as easy as possible to, to help the companies to fulfill their technology switch as this is a very, very important switch. Definitely. And we are not only talking about 2 to 40 switch. All the units have to be futureproof and to provide units to be, installed very easy, very fast.

00:16:40: Shawn Gabor So the switch from 2G to 4G can take place until 2020 8th July. So there will not be to the switch turning off to 2G. They will do it step by step, but it will be very fast afterwards and visit us on our booth. We show you how to do this and we help you to do this.

00:16:59: Denise Wenzel Thank you. So my last question is if you had to describe this industry, this lift industry, this lift community in three words, what would it be?

00:17:13: Shawn Gabor I think the most hitting point is safety. So the lifts are one of the safest travel units you can have in the world. Definitely for decades now for, for, more than 100 years, reliability. So still 32 years in average for the lifts in Germany. This is.

00:17:36: Denise Wenzel Amazing. Yeah.

00:17:38: Shawn Gabor The cars are not so old. Yeah, definitely. The third word, I would say slow in adapting new technologies, unfortunately. But we do our very best to help the customers.

00:17:52: Denise Wenzel To slow test it. Take your time. And. Yes, okay.

00:17:57: Shawn Gabor It has to be safe and reliable. So it's not. Oh, I have a new unit here. I install it, after which it doesn't work. Or the safety's, not what it was before. Oh, really? Reliability is down now. Slow but trustworthy. Definitely.

00:18:14: Denise Wenzel Yeah. And so lifts will be one of the most safe vehicles on Earth.

00:18:21: Shawn Gabor In the vertical transportation.

00:18:24: Denise Wenzel Yeah. And we trust in them. Perfect. Sean, thank you so much for your great insight. And yeah, showing us how innovation and safety go hand in hand. And to our listeners, stay tuned if you like it. And, for more inspiration and conversations with people who keep our world moving in the lift industry, stay tuned. We go up and down, but always forward here.

00:18:51: Denise Wenzel Lift and leaders, the Inter Lift podcast. Thank you very much for joining us for listening. Thank you very much, John.

00:18:57: Shawn Gabor Thanks to these.