KONE’s Veturi Program: Building a Sustainable Urban Future

A Four-Year Journey of Innovation with 200 Partners

 

In 2020, KONE launched the “Flow of Urban Life” Veturi ecosystem program, addressing urbanization and sustainability challenges. Supported by EUR 20 million from Business Finland, the program brought together 200 companies, resulting in over a hundred patent applications.

“The Veturi program helped us find high-tech partners to co-create solutions for the physical and digital world. Business Finland and other leading companies, such as Nokia, Wärtsilä and Meyer Turku, have been important players. We have also collaborated with top universities and researchers who are experts in studying smart and sustainable cities,” says Tomio Pihkala, Chief Technology Officer at KONE.

Key Achievements and Innovations

 

  • Increased R&D Investments: KONE’s Veturi program has generated new knowledge and innovations in several key technology areas, promoting the development of Finnish expertise and companies in the field of smart and sustainable cities. KONE’s R&D investments in Finland grew by 7% annually, especially in AI, digital twins, and data analytics.
  • KONE SiteFlow: This construction management application was tested in industry projects, winning the Council of Tall Buildings Innovation Award in 2024.
  • Digital Twin Concept: Enhances urban commuting by simulating people flow in transport hubs.

Ongoing Innovation

“Research collaboration provided us with a vision of the future, an idea of where the world is going – a vision to create smart construction and sustainable urban environments for the future, for example. Now we have a better understanding of customer needs and emerging technologies. We received a lot of support from external partners that helped us develop the technologies used in our future products,” says Janne Öfversten, digital innovation lead at KONE.

 

 

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KONE

  • As a global leader in the elevator and escalator industry, KONE moves two billion people every day, making their journeys safe, convenient, and reliable with smart and sustainable People Flow®. KONE’s purpose is to shape the future of cities.
  • Year of foundation: 1910
  • Sales:  ~€11 billion (in 2023)
  • Personnel: over 60,000, of which 2,582 are based in Finland
  • The mission of KONE’s Veturi program, The Flow of Urban Life (2021–2024), was to develop smooth and sustainable services and solutions for the next 1 billion people moving into cities by 2030, helping to ease some of the major challenges caused by urbanization and climate change.
  • KONE’s Veturi program also seeks to create new business for the ecosystem partners and KONE worth a total of EUR 1 billion in the coming years.

Optimizing Rush Hour Management in Stations with Digital Twin Technology

KONE has developed a groundbreaking digital twin innovation in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to enhance people flow in crowded city hubs. This pioneering solution leverages data to improve urban mobility, enabling smoother and more efficient commuter experiences.

Navigating crowded metro stations during rush hour can be stressful, as congested pathways challenge both patience and schedules. To address this, KONE, in collaboration with AWS, developed a digital twin concept that uses real-time data to simulate and optimize people flow in urban hubs, with a successful pilot at Helsinki’s main railway station.

As cities continue to grow, the demand for sustainable mobility increases, requiring stations to adapt and better serve diverse groups of people. This innovative approach by KONE aims to make commuting smoother, less crowded, and more comfortable, ultimately supporting the backbone of sustainable urban mobility.

A real-life 3D model of people flow

The digital twin proof-of-concept (PoC) combines real-time and historical data from people flow sensors with elevator, escalator, and train status information. The model provides valuable insights into location-specific people flow dynamics, helping improve user experience and plan for future capacity needs.

The smooth and eye-catching user interface (UI) is backed up with AWS cloud technology and platform. The result is a whole package that enables customers to test different people flow scenarios. The goal is for every aspect of people flow to be optimized to improve both user experience and overall transport capacity.

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