Next group: Hager is new board of management member

At the Next group General Assembly at the end of November Kjell Johansson, founder of Hydroware AB, retired from his position. Volker Hager, General Manager at Hydroware GmbH, was newly elected to the board as his successor.

Next group is an international, non-profit industry consortium, located in Germany. It provides an unbiased platform for developing standardized components and interfaces for lifts and escalators. In addition to Volker Hager, Geert Maurissen, Group Managing Director at Safeline, and Jörg Hellmich, Managing Director of Elfin Technology, are part of the three-member board.

Principle of open interfaces

Photo: © Next group

During his time on the board, Kjell Johannson was committed to promoting open interfaces in the lift industry – for him, they are a must in the future: "Especially in hospitals it is often not possible to access existing systems, for example to modernise a lift, due to a lack of access to protocols. This should be avoided at all costs in the future; the entire communication of a lift must take place via a standardised API in the cloud. Next group can help to ensure that companies no longer keep their software secret but make it available to everyone."

Hager, managing director of Hydroware GmbH, is also convinced of the principle of open interfaces: "They create a great advantage for the end customer. Connecting a lift system to a portal, for example, becomes much easier with open interfaces. For successful implementation, lift companies, component and control manufacturers must agree on a standard. For this, we at Next group can do important work and hopefully gain many new members".

More information: next-group.org
hydroware.com