Sergio Biglino: The Wittur booth is set in 5 sections: Safety, Innovation, High performance, Energy saving, Modernization; as there are really many news, let me mention some of them.

Let’s start from safety, the basic and most important requirement for the elevator industry. We all heard about the tragic accidents occurred recently. Wittur displayed on the booth 2 UCM solutions out of the 4 we can offer in total: the first based on the electronic overspeed governor EOS and bi-directional progressive safety gears BSG-25P, the second on EOS with gearless drive.

Among several features, EOS provides a very accurate position measurement, and triggers the safety gear or the gearless brake at a predefined distance from floor level, to stop car unintended moving.

In the high performance section, the new Pegasus Skyline car and landing door with a magnificent finishing is displayed as a representation of Wittur high-rise solutions, together with a selection of safety gears and speed governor also suitable for very high performance.

Augusta Prime landing doors and Augusta ECO door, which are presented here for the first time, are designed for the entry market and feature Wittur safety and quality standard at competitive price.

Besides doors, we display two examples of our cars production, and they catch the most of the eyes on the booth. One of them is a square panoramic car with shiny mirror stainless steel and glass, the other one is the newly designed Modular Car System type. Another product making its first appearance at a Chinese exhibition is the gearless drive WSG09, designed and produced by Wittur China.
 

Sergio Biglino: “Safety in Motion” is not just a new slogan, there is much more behind.

Wittur wants to highlight its commitment to safety, because once again this must be the first target of this industry, for sure not only in China but ALL OVER THE WORLD.

The starting point is the product design itself, safety has to be one of the key project elements; soon after you need a supply chain able to consistently deliver the needed quality, internal solid manufacturing, assembly and control processes. This requires investment in staff training, to increase the awareness of what they’re doing and the impact on safety of it.

When all this is achieved, you can think about a claim, but it’s just the final and easier part of the job.

“Safety in motion”will replace “Excellence in Solutions” in all our company material and communication, helping to confirm our image of prime business partner.
 

Li Shaohua: Wittur has been committed to provide high-quality products and leading technology. Now, from the market point of view, to provide solutions to customers and problems becomes more important to be competitive. We established Wittur Academy first of all to train our staff to provide customers with truly effective and qualified services, from sales to delivery.

Wittur Academy successfully trained more than 200 people in Suzhou, and many of whom are now coming from our customers’ staff.

Customers from all over Asia Pacific can have both products training course and hands-on practice in Wittur Academy, and this service is very appreciated.

4. Has Wittur been making greater market inroads this year?

Li Shaohua: Wittur sales strategy combines maintaining the existing cooperation with multinational companies with a clear intent to increase understanding and penetration in mid-size elevator companies. We expanded the sales team, now three times bigger than 2 years ago, and set more than 20 branches all over China mainland.

Secondly, in terms of products, Wittur is developing more safety related products according to the needs of Chinese market. Although the amount of new elevator is growing in the Chinese market, the growth slows down slightly. The future lies in the modernization business, and this is why Wittur also displays a modernization kit on the booth. With so many years in the elevator industry, Wittur is able to provide modernization solutions for all kinds of elevator brands.

5. How has the phase II factory of Wittur China been running since its opening? Has the output been increasing?

Li Shaohua: The Phase II of Wittur China plant, established at 2013, reached the capacity of millions of sets of doors. We not only increased production capacity, but also improved production lines and fit the requirements of diversified products availability and small scale, to serve more customers. In line with the ecological and environmental strategy of Wittur, the plant hosts a new “phosphate free” paint line with 100% waste water recycling. Start from the Phase II plant, we made big improvement in the entire production plant through implementing excellence operational and lean manufacturing concepts.

6. What are your focuses in terms of product R&D and market development?

Sergio Biglino: First of all, Wittur R&D is focused in ensuring that all the products are compliant with the latest norms and regulations, Chinese and international. As you know, norms are constantly on the move, therefore is very important to have our members holding important positions in the various associations to capture the coming trends and address accordingly the R&D projects.

About market development, focus is on developing new products in different segments of the same family as well as enlarging our offering to new components and packages.

7. How does the Special Equipment Safety Law influence Wittur?

Sergio Biglino: This will help us, because our products already comply with the law, so we have solutions developed already. Besides that, I personally believe that it’s a step in the right direction of enhancing end users safety.

8. How will you catch more market share and win over more customers against the intense market competition?

Sergio Biglino: I am very clear about that. Wittur is on the market since 50 years, and wants to be there for a long time more. For sure we need to expand the product portfolio in all segments and provide customers with a variety of products, and we have to be ready to offer also in China our expertise in modernization. But on the long run quality and services to the customer will be our real competitive advantage, because customers are getting more and more aware of what the full cost of a component is: purchase price, installation, warranty problems, on site repair, etc.

Li Shaohua: The expert employee team, technology and extensive project experience ensure that Wittur can provide premium service beside products.

9. Wittur Group has a lot of production sites and sales offices worldwide. How is Wittur China positioned among all these sites?

Sergio Biglino: Wittur is a global company with 10 manufacturing sites and branches all over the world. Wittur China is obviously getting more and more important because it’s based in the fastest growing market in the world. With the efforts and great job of Shaohua and his team, we succeeded in having our plant to be a global model of efficiency and performance. So we use the volumes of this operation to develop new lean manufacturing concepts, and then apply these best practices in all the other group companies.

10. What do you think about the future of Chinese elevator market? What your strategy according to the development of Chinese elevator market? What is the goal in China in next years?

Sergio Biglino: We believe that the basic fundamental drives are still there. Because people will keep moving to the cities and the demand will be sustained by this urbanization process. And high-end market is still growing fast: retail, resorts and hotels all these still developing on a quick pace.

On the other hands, we all know the concern about the price of the residential application for middle class, so soon or later we can foresee the slowing down of new installations. But this doesn’t mean that we foresee a decrease of our business, because it’s also clear the coming need of modernization. We started working on it 2 years ago, building a team dedicated only to modernization, and already developed several modernization kits.

Our goal is to maintain our technology leadership among elevator components and solutions providers and to enable more elevator manufacturers to make use of it. In the near future we will also need to expand our footprint in China, and we are therefore working to find out the best option for us.