Smart Elevator / ERP
An elevator ERP for parts,
purchasing and installation projects.
Spare parts inventory across stores and vans, procurement with real approvals, vendor records that hold rates and lead times, installation project tracking, and material planning driven by your maintenance calendar. Engineered to your specification, on the same records as your CRM and service operations.
The problem
The part is always
somewhere else.
A technician reaches a site, finds a failed door operator, and calls the store. The store says it has two. One of those went out in a van last week and nobody wrote it down. The other is at the branch in the next city. The job waits, the SLA slips, and the building manager calls the office.
Meanwhile purchasing runs on WhatsApp approvals and a purchase order typed into Word. Vendor rates live in the buyer's memory. Installation projects track their material in a spreadsheet that one person maintains. At month end, the stock figure in the spreadsheet and the stock figure in the accounts do not agree, and somebody spends two days finding out why.
None of this is a discipline problem. It is a tooling problem. The service software the industry sells covers tickets and visits and then stops, so everything commercial falls back to Excel by default.
What gets built
Six modules, shaped around
how lift companies buy and consume.
Scope is set with you. Some customers start with inventory and procurement only. Others need project tracking from day one because installations are the bulk of the business. The modules below are the usual shape of an elevator ERP build.
- Parts master carrying compatible controller types and models
- Purchase orders with value-band approvals and three-way match
- Vendor rates and lead times compared at the point of ordering
- Stock tracked across stores, vans, sites and the repairable pool
- Installation projects with material issue, pending and blockers
- Reorder points driven by the maintenance calendar, per location
Spare parts inventory
A parts master with elevator structure: door operators, controller boards, ropes, guide shoes, sensors, VVVF drives, consumables. Each part carries its compatible controller types and models, so a technician searching for a part for a specific unit gets the right one rather than a catalogue.
Procurement and purchase orders
Indent from a branch, approval by value band, purchase order to the vendor, goods receipt against the order, and a three-way match between order, receipt and invoice. Partial receipts and short supplies are handled rather than ignored.
Vendor management
Vendor records with the parts they supply, agreed rates, lead times, payment terms and delivery performance. When two vendors supply the same part, the buyer sees both prices and both lead times at the point of raising the order.
Installation project tracking
New installations and modernization jobs run as projects: milestones, material requirement, dispatch, site readiness, labour allocation, inspection and handover. Each project shows what is issued, what is pending and what is blocking it.
Material planning
Forecast consumption from the maintenance calendar and the known replacement intervals for the elevators under contract, then set reorder points from that forecast. Planning driven by the service book rather than by last quarter guesswork.
Multi-branch operations
Separate stock, purchasing authority and reporting per branch, with head office visibility across all of them. Inter-branch transfers recorded properly, so a part borrowed from another city is not simply lost from the ledger.
Stock locations
A van is a warehouse.
Track it like one.
Most of the stock loss in an elevator business happens between the store and the site. Once every holding point is a tracked location with recorded transfers, the numbers stop drifting and shortages become traceable.
Central store
Bulk holdings, imported items and long lead time components.
Branch stores
Regional stock held against the contracts and projects served from that branch.
Technician vans
The stock that actually gets consumed. Tracked per technician, reconciled on issue and return.
Site stock
Material dispatched to an installation site and held there until it is consumed or returned.
Quarantine and rejects
Received material failing inspection, held separately until the vendor debit note is settled.
Repairable pool
Recovered components under repair, so a refurbished board is not counted as new stock.
Send us your current indent and purchase order formats. We will map them to a working procurement flow.
Book a scoping call →Procurement flow
Requirement to receipt,
with an audit trail.
Raised from low stock, a project list or a technician request.
Approved by value band and issued to the chosen vendor.
Checked against the order, partial receipts and rejects recorded.
Booked into the right store, van or site location.
Material issued to the installation job that needs it.
Requirement raised
From a low stock trigger, a project material list, a maintenance forecast or a technician request on a ticket.
Indent and approval
Consolidated into an indent, routed by value band and category to the approver your policy defines.
Vendor selection
Rate comparison across approved vendors with lead time and past delivery performance shown alongside price.
Purchase order issued
PO generated in your format, sent to the vendor, and tracked with expected delivery dates and follow-up reminders.
Goods receipt and inspection
Receipt against the PO, quantity and quality check, partial receipts and rejections recorded with reasons.
Invoice match and handoff
Vendor invoice matched to order and receipt, then exported to your accounting stack for payment.
Material planning
Plan against the service book,
not against a hunch.
You already know how many units are under contract, how often each is visited, and which components have a replacement interval. That is a demand forecast sitting in your maintenance data, unused, because the stock system cannot see it.
When the ERP and the maintenance schedule are one system, planning becomes arithmetic instead of instinct. Add live fault data from the IoT layer and the forecast starts reflecting units that are actually degrading.
Expected consumption per branch derived from the AMC visit calendar and the units under contract
Reorder points and safety stock set per part per location, not one global minimum
Long lead time items flagged well before the project that needs them starts
Consumption booked against the ticket, contract, unit or project that used it
Slow moving and dead stock surfaced so capital stops sitting in a shelf nobody opens
Shortage traced to a cause: late vendor, unplanned failure, transfer not recorded, or an under-forecast
Why RnD Square
The category sells you a service tool,
then leaves you the spreadsheets.
A field service tool ends at the job card. A full ERP layer carries purchasing, stock valuation inputs, vendor performance and project material on the same records.
| Scope | Full ERP layer | Service tool alone |
|---|---|---|
| Spare parts master | Structured by controller and model | Basic list, if present |
| Procurement and approvals | Value-band routing with audit trail | Outside scope |
| Vendor rates and lead times | Held and compared at ordering | Kept in the buyer memory |
| Stock across vans and sites | Every location tracked | Store level at best |
| Installation projects | Material issue, pending and blockers | Not modelled |
Field service tools stop at the job card
Elevator service software as a category is built around tickets, technicians and maintenance visits. That is real work and those tools do it well. Purchasing, stock valuation inputs, vendor performance and project material control usually sit outside that scope, which is why most companies end up running a separate ERP or a spreadsheet alongside.
So the ERP layer becomes spreadsheets
The result in most elevator companies is a service tool for operations, Tally or QuickBooks for books, and a stack of Excel files for stock, indents and project material. Every one of those boundaries is a place where numbers stop agreeing.
We build the ERP layer to your spec
RnD Square engineers the inventory, procurement and project modules to match how your branches actually order and consume, on the same records as your CRM, operations and billing. One system, one set of numbers, no reconciliation.
Your extended R&D team
RnD Square is an engineering partner. We design the hardware, write the firmware and build the software layers your business runs on, to your specification. The ERP is one of those layers, and it is built by the same team that builds the rest of the system.
FAQ
Questions we get about the ERP
Related
The rest of the system.
Stop reconciling.
Start with one system.
Tell us how many branches you run, how your stock moves, and where your purchasing gets stuck. We will scope an ERP build that fits it, phased so value lands early.