Adams Moves Parts To New Warehouse

Adams Elevator Equipment Co. has opened a 67,000-sq.-ft. parts-distribution center in Maumee, Ohio. This modern warehouse facility, implements updated warehouse- and transportation-management processes. An inventory encompassing 40,000 part numbers is being relocated from Niles, Illinois, to the new facility for its scheduled October opening. When the inventory transition is complete, the parts-distribution center will carry all the company’s printed circuit boards and other components and assemblies produced at Adams’ Holland, Ohio, plant.

Man-D-Tec Personnel Changes

Man-D-Tec, Inc. has named Wesley Van Duine as its new Sales manager. Van Duine joined the company in 2004 as an apprentice and has since completed his Accounting degree from Arizona State University. While at Man-D-Tec, Van Duine has worked as a production lead and purchasing agent before moving to his current role. Additionally, Man-D-Tec has added Kreigh Greenstreet to its purchasing department. Greenstreet holds a degree in Supply Chain Management, also from Arizona State University. His responsibilities include procurement, project management and inventory control.

Janus Elevator Opens New Web Store

In June, Janus Elevator Products announced the opening of its new online store (www.januselevatoronlinestore.com) designed for U.S.-based elevator contractors and end users. The store has a broad inventory of Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant elevator phones and communication equipment by EMS, elevator displays by E-Motive and Janus elevator safety edges. Users can add products to their carts, while the site’s Order Builder configuration tool assists them with selecting the correct products to fit job requirements. Each product has its features and specifications listed, along with downloadable data sheets. In addition, a comparison tool lets customers see product details side by side.

Dart Employs Kings I I I

Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) partnered with Kings III Emergency Communications in June to gain efficiencies and further its customer-service initiative. DART provides mobility to commuters in Dallas and 12 surrounding cities with its modern public-transit services and customer facilities. DART Rail, Trinity Railway Express commuter rail and bus services move more than 220,000 passengers per day across a 700-sq.-mi. service area.

DART’s customer-service initiative, “5 Star,” is intended to strengthen customer service in all parts of the organization. Carol Wise, executive vice president/chief operations officer at DART, commented, “The initiative will require us to look at our operations, training, facilities and talent acquisition to ensure a consistent customer experience.” The transit authority enlisted the help of Kings III, also based in the Dallas metropolitan area, to enhance its current performance-tracking system. The installation of Kings III’s Online Remote Monitoring (ORM) tracks elevator and escalator performance automatically via remote monitoring.

Dean Heasley, National ORM and Joint Venture Business Development manager at Kings III, commented, “Our ability to provide [DART] with an online tracking method helped to drastically reduce man hours and increase efficiencies of [its] equipment performance.” Information is provided to DART in approximately 10 seconds, increasing internal knowledge of any malfunctions. ORM is also expected to help DART with preventative maintenance and improve overall lift-equipment performance.

Lax Terminal To Open

The Sacramento Bee has reported on details of the new Tom Bradley International Terminal at the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), where Otis is providing 92 elevators, escalators and moving walks (ELEVATOR WORLD, February 2013). Among the features is a 72-ft.-tall “Time Tower,” with an elevator and interactive surface that reacts to the movements of passengers. The escalators and moving walks will take advantage of a “sleep mode” to save electricity when not in use. Sixty restaurants/retailers and 18 gates (nine of which will be able to handle the Airbus A380) are included in the 1.2 million sq. ft. of usable area. As of June, the terminal was to partially open in August. A full opening is pegged at 2015.

712 Main Street Gets Port, Power Factor 1

Schindler has modernized downtown Houston’s 712 Main Street building elevators with its Personal Occupant Requirement Terminal (PORT) system. Intended to complement the 1920s Art Deco style and save energy, the destination-dispatch technology was installed on the nine passenger elevators with custom cabins (ELEVATOR WORLD, February 2013) in the 36-story multitenant office building’s east tower. It is the first building in the city to install PORT, which is touted by Schindler to improve overall system efficiency by approximately 30%.

Schindler also installed its energy-efficient Power Factor 1 drives on the elevators to reduce the building’s energy consumption by up to 40% compared to that of standard drives and regenerate power back to the building’s electrical system, where it can then be used for other demands, such as lighting and air-conditioning. In addition, the drives generate less heat, providing additional savings through reduced machine-room cooling requirements.

New York Construction Surges Back

Building projects in New York City are surging back after the economic downturn, with many previously idle sites now active, Forbes reports. The city had US$20.5 billion worth of new office, mixed-use and residential construction in 2012, and in the first five months of 2013, saw another US$8.5 billion worth of new projects. Many of the 700-plus projects that had stalled at the height of the downturn three years ago are now moving forward, the magazine stated. Residential construction is playing a big role in the comeback, with a US$225-million Bjarke Ingels-designed pyramid-shaped building in Manhattan and the world’s tallest modular tower, Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards B2 Residential Tower, among projects creating a buzz. For the second year running, the Big Apple tops Forbes’ list of U.S. cities with the most new construction. Dallas and Houston are second and third, respectively.

Lerch Bates Appoints Project Managers

International consulting firm Lerch Bates Inc. has announced Craig Sawvel, Dean Herbstreit and William Bowden have joined the company as project managers. Sawvel will provide materials-management technical-consulting services to architects, developers and property owners, and collaborate on vertical-transportation and façade-access consulting services from the company’s metropolitan Denver headquarters. Prior to joining Lerch Bates, he worked for Swisslog, a global provider of integrated logistics solutions for warehouses, distribution centers and hospitals, for 22 years. He most recently served as Swisslog’s Automated Drug Management Systems project manager. Sawvel holds a BS in Architecture from the University of Texas at Arlington and is a certified Project Management Professional.

Bowden joined the company in its Dallas office to manage vertical-transportation system studies, perform vertical maintenance evaluations, design and oversee construction services for vertical-transportation equipment and support design and construction services for façade-access and materials-management handling systems. He has more than 15 years of experience in elevator and escalator modernization sales and project management and formerly served as a service-account manager for Schindler. He also worked as a modernization-sales account manager for Amtech Elevator Services, as well as a service/modernization superintendent and construction/modernization superintendent for KONE. Bowden earned a BS in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Houston-Downtown

Herbstreit joined Lerch Bates’ Richmond, Virginia, office as a project manager to provide technical consulting services to architects on material-handling systems, as well as collaboration on materials management, elevator and façade-access consulting services. He manages and consults on automated solutions for the healthcare industry. Herbstreit has served as a sales executive for Pevco, where he provided consultation and sales services for the application of healthcare pneumatic-tube systems. He has also worked as an automated logistics solutions consultant and national customer-service sales manager and regional account manager for Swisslog, where he provided consulting and sales services for the application of automated material-distribution systems within healthcare facilities.