You've probably never stepped into an elevator and thought: "There's a digital, data and AI engine running this in the background."
Passengers just want the door to open. On time. Every time. Rightfully so.
Last week we at TK Elevator won the Made in Europe Award 2026 for Innovation with EOX, our new digital native elevator platform. Digital and AI aren't just built into the elevator. They also run the operations around it. On behalf of our teams we recieved the Award in Berlin. Isabel Hartung Matthias Gohl Bora Gülan
Our teams around the world built and run the whole stack. Technicians keep thousands of units moving. Digital Operations Centers spot problems before the customer ever notices. Models interpret sensor data and flag which component is likely to fail next, so the technician arrives first.
What made it work comes down to three success factors.
1️⃣ Start with value
Every initiative began with two simple questions: What does the passenger, the building owner or the technician actually gain? And what value does it create for TKE? If you can't answer both, you're not building a scalable and value adding product. You're building a fancy pilot that will never fly.
2️⃣ Execution excellence
Great ideas don't run elevators. People do. It takes clear ownership, teams that deliver into production instead of into presentations, and the discipline to run and improve every single day. Without that, even the best AI stays a demo and a strategy deck has never repaired an elevator.
3️⃣ The right data foundation and context
A model doesn't know what a door fault means. Someone has to teach it, with clear definitions and the knowledge of people who've fixed thousands of them. It's not the most popular work at the start, but it's the only way to create value and gain speed. Once the foundation stands, you can sell, learn and iterate in weeks instead of quarters.
The companies most afraid of falling behind in AI often run the most pilots. Pilots feel like progress. Often they're just a way to look busy without changing anything. It's an expensive way to avoid a decision, or a sign that execution excellence is missing.
And for boards: your AI problem is rarely an AI problem or a strategy problem. It's a focus and execution problem. Someone has to say: "We stop twelve pilots and focus on the three that create real value."
And to everyone who fears what AI will bring: Nobody ever shaped the future from the passenger seat. Put your hands on the steering wheel and your foot on the pedal.
We need to face it.
Thanks to our great teams & key leaders at TKE and our Partners for making all of this happen.
Vincent Della Valle Ernesto Sarralde Anna White Dr. Sebastian Schloesser Levent Gözüyasli Marc J. Wiemann Jan Netzer Christian Jung Fausto Richetti Blanco Ruben P. DUP UNTERNEHMER Bundesministerium für Digitales und Staatsmodernisierung
#EOX #TKElevator #IndustrialAI #Leadership #AI #Transformation