Institution news
During our remarkable technical visit to Guangzhou's Chow Tai Fook Centre, the top-rated performance of Hitachi elevator impressed our Members as it is the world’s fastest elevator with a record-breaking speed of 1260 metres per minute.
IMechE Hong Kong Branch was honoured to have a valuable opportunity to visit Hitachi Elevator (China) Co. Ltd production plants and its headquarter in Guangzhou on 1 July 2019.
Hitachi Facilities in Guangzhou Science City
Hitachi Elevator (China) Co., Ltd was founded in 1995; it is the largest elevator overseas base of Hitachi Group. We first visited the Hitachi R&D Centre and production plant in Guangzhou Science City. The R&D Center exhibited and introduced various Hitachi products in different regions. For instance, the innovative services data centre demonstrated how the maintenance and support services can be managed in a digital way through Cloud migration and optimisation services, big data integration and analytics.
Training material demonstration
With the comprehensive visual presentation and operation simulation of the world’s fastest elevator presented by Hitachi, the development background and features were easily understood. In addition to various operation and design safety features such as enhanced braking system and over-speed governor, this hyper speed elevator adopted pressure alteration equipment to alleviate uncomfortable ears popping due to sudden pressure change. By utilising the newly designed high-strength main rope for holding up the elevator car, it reduces the suspended load on the traction machine and corresponding energy input.
Hitachi arranged guided tour for us to visit the escalator plant, the plant is very well-organised with numerous automatic machines, which applied for whole manufacturing progress of the escalator. With high level manpower management and automatic machine involvement, the manufacturing progress was smooth and efficient.
Another highlight of the tour was the visit to the elevator plant in Guangzhou Dashi. After the guided tour to the production plant, we visited the training centre for elevators. The Hitachi representatives were eager to share the elevator operation and design safety features to us through training material demonstration and on-site illustration. Our members and Hitachi created a fabulous learning platform for technical interaction.
Hong Kong Branch at the Hitachi R&D Center
Mr. Michael Lee, our Honorary Secretary of Hong Kong Branch concluded this riveting and fruitful technical visit,
“Today visit to Hitachi R&D Center and production plants is absolutely a wonderful experience to broaden our horizon towards next generation elevator and escalator development and innovative services data management system. The technical visit is perfectly aligned with 2019/2020 Hong Kong Branch 3 big focus aspects, they are the Digital, Energy and Safety of Design and Operation which are the industry trending.”
Eventually, we highly appreciate for Hitachi arranging a meaningful technical visit and informative technology sharing and exhibition for our members. We look forward to the upcoming innovation in the industry and next speed record breakthrough.