Otis Worldwide Corporation

Former North American Headquarters in Farmington, Connecticut.
Trade name	Otis Elevator Company
Type	Public
Traded as	NYSE: OTIS S&P 500 component
Industry	Vertical transport systems
Founded	20 September 1853; 166 years ago (acquired in 1976, spun off in 2020)
Founder	Elisha Otis
Headquarters	Farmington, Connecticut, U.S.
Key people	Judy Marks (President and CEO)
Products	Elevators and escalators
Revenue	US$13.113 billion (2019)[1]
Operating income	US$1.948 billion (2019)[1]
Number of employees	68,078 (2019)[1]
Website	www.otis.com

Otis Worldwide Corporation (branded as the Otis Elevator Company, its former legal name) is an American company that develops, manufactures and markets elevators, escalators, moving walkways, and related equipment.

Based in Farmington, Connecticut, U.S, Otis is the world’s largest manufacturer of vertical transportation systems, principally focusing on elevators, moving walkways, and escalators.^[2] The company pioneered the development of the “safety elevator”, invented by Elisha Otis in 1852, which used a special mechanism to lock the elevator car in place should the hoisting ropes fail.

The Otis Elevator Company was acquired by United Technologies in 1976, but it was spun off as an independent company 44 years later in April 2020 as Otis Worldwide Corporation.^[3][4]

The booming elevator market

In 1852 Elisha Otis invented the safety elevator, which automatically comes to a halt if the hoisting rope breaks. After a demonstration at the 1854 New York World’s Fair the elevator industry established credibility.^[5]

Otis elevator in Glasgow, Scotland, imported from the U.S. in 1856 for Gardner’s Warehouse, the oldest cast-iron fronted building in the British Isles.

The Otis Elevator Company was founded in Yonkers, New York in 1853 by Elisha Otis. When Elisha died in 1861, his sons Charles and Norton formed a partnership and continued the business. During the American Civil War, their elevators were in high demand due to the shipment of war materials. Businesses throughout the United States purchased them. In 1864, with the partnership of J.M. Alvord, the company became known as Otis Brothers & Co.^[6] In 1867, Otis opened a factory in Yonkers, New York, the city where the company was founded.^[7]

In 1925, the world’s first fully automatic elevator, Collective Control, was introduced. in 1931, the company installed the world’s first double-deck elevator in New York City.^[8]

Otis opened a factory in Bloomington, Indiana in 1965.^[9]

Fayette S. Dunn became president of the company in 1964, succeeding the late Percy Douglas.^[10]

1980s changes

Otis was acquired by United Technologies in 1976 and became a wholly owned subsidiary. In 1981, the Yonkers factory closed,^[11][12] and was later purchased by Kawasaki for use as a rail car assembly plant.^[13] Also in 1981, Otis signed a business agreement with an elevator company in China^[14] and Francois Jaulin became president. In 1989 Karl J. Krapek became president of the company^[15] and was replaced in 1991 by Jean-Pierre van Rooy.^[16]

During the 1980s, Otis developed the Remote Elevator Monitoring (REM) system that collected behavioral data from 300,000 elevators.^[17]

Otis has also dabbled in horizontal automated people-mover “shuttle” systems, such as the Otis Hovair. In 1996, Otis formed a joint venture called “Poma-Otis Transportation Systems” with the French company Pomagalski to promote these products. That partnership has since ended.

1990s acquisitions

Otis Elevator Company purchased Evans Lifts in the UK when Evans Lifts Ltd went bankrupt in 1997 during its merge with Express Lift Company with the name ExpressEvans. It was the oldest and largest manufacturer of lift equipment in the UK, and was based in Leicester, England. Otis’ Customer Care Centre is still based in the old Evans Lifts building in Leicester. The building has since been extended by Otis. There are some installations of Evans Lifts in use today. Few lifts made by Otis are branded as Evans. Notably, an original Evans Lift is still in the Silver Arcade in Leicester. It formerly transported people to the upper floors. The upper floors are no longer occupied: the lift is no longer used. Also in 1997, Steve Page became president of Otis Elevator Co.^[18]

In 1999, Otis acquired CemcoLift, Inc, located in Hatfield, Pennsylvania. The operation was later closed in October 2012, with the remaining business being sold to Minnesota Elevator Inc. In 2002, Ari Bousbib became president of Otis.^[19]

Recent developments

Didier Michaud-Daniel became president of the company in 2008.^[20] In 2011, Otis acquired its competitor Marshall Elevator for an undisclosed amount.^[21] Beginning in 2011, Otis cut its manufacturing operations in Nogales and supply-chain operations in Tucson, Arizona as part of a consolidation of manufacturing operations in Florence, South Carolina,^[22] where Otis purchased a former Maytag facility on 92 acres.^[23] As part of the consolidation, Otis shut down its Bloomington facility in 2012.^[24] In February 2012, Pedro Sainz de Baranda was named President of the company, replacing Michaud-Daniel.^[25]

In October 2013, Otis won its biggest ever contract; it will supply 670 elevators and escalators to the Hyderabad Metro.^[26] Its second biggest contract was in 2012, to supply 349 elevators for the Hangzhou metro.^[26] In 2015, Otis had to downplay its expansion in Asia after orders in the region started to drop.^[27] In January 2018, Otis inaugurated the installation of the world’s longest double-deck elevator (30 elevators) in the 555-meter Lotte World Tower in Seoul. The “sky shuttle” can take 54 passengers from the 2nd floor to the 121st floor in 1 minute.^[8]

On October 9, 2017, Judy Marks was named President of Otis Elevator Company, replacing Philippe Delpech.^[28] In November 2018, United Technologies announced it would spin off Otis Elevator into an independent company, announced on November 26, 2018.^[29][30] Its headquarters are to remain in Connecticut.^[31] In 2019, Otis geared up its artificial intelligence technology by capitalizing on predictive technologies.^[17]

Description

An Otis escalator

The Otis Elevator Company develops, manufactures and markets elevators, escalators, moving walkways, and related equipment. The company is based in Farmington, Connecticut. In 2014, Otis had more than 64,000 employees, with a revenue of US$13.0 billion.

Otis has installed elevators in some of the world’s most famous structures, including the Eiffel Tower, Empire State Building (modernization partnership signed in 2011^[32]), the original World Trade Center, The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, Petronas Twin Towers, Burj Khalifa, CN Tower, the Winchester Mystery House, the Hotel del Coronado, the Demarest Building (first electric elevator), the Singing Tower at Bok Tower Gardens, and the Skylon Tower.

Incidents

On July 24, 2009, a group of 8 people were trapped for 8 hours in an Otis elevator in Toronto. A repair man who tried to fix the elevator fell 10 floors to his death.^[33] The following year on December 14, 2010, an Otis escalator installed in the International Trade station of Shenzhen Metro Line 1 retrograded without notice, triggering a stampede that injured 25 passengers.^[34] On July 5, 2011, an Otis 513MPE escalator installed at Beijing Subway Line 4 Zoo Station changed direction without notice, causing 30 people to fall. One boy was killed and 27 people injured, prompting China to halt the use of the escalator model. A Beijing official called the 513MPE escalator “defects in design, manufacturing and maintenance,” and Otis had “unavoidable responsibility for the accident.”^[35] Shenzhen Metro authorities confirmed that the cause of the accident was also similar to the Shenzhen accident on December 14.^[34]

In March 2017, eighteen people suffered injuries at Hong Kong’s Langham Place shopping mall when an escalator maintained by Otis reversed direction from up to down.^[36][37]

On July 9, 2018 a one year old Otis escalator at Stockholm City Station changed direction from up to a rapid descent, in what local officials called a “free fall”,^[38] causing minor injuries. Inspection of the gear boxes of several Otis escalators revealed unexpected rust and heavy wear. This led to the newly-built train stations Stockholm City Station and Stockholm Odenplan being temporarily closed on July 13, 2018, for security reasons until the problems were understood and resolved.^[39][40]

Controversies

In February 2007, European Union regulators fined Otis Elevator €225 million ($295.8 million) for being part of a price-fixing cartel in the Belgian, Dutch, Luxembourg, and German markets. Competitors ThyssenKrupp, Schindler Group, KONE, and Mitsubishi Elevator Europe were also fined for participating in the same cartel.^[