Proprietary Equipment and What It Means to You
Kencor, Inc. Elevator Systems continually strives to provide our customers educational resources to help them stay informed with their elevator maintenance, repair, and installation needs. We feel it is of utmost importance to understand your elevator equipment as to enable multiple maintenance providers and frequent accessibility to replaceable parts, which allows for fewer elevator inoperability timeframes.
Something to be aware of when installing an elevator is knowing if you are installing proprietary or non-proprietary equipment. The commonly accepted definition of Proprietary, related to products, is something that is used, produced, or marketed under exclusive legal rights of the manufacturer. The manufacturer has no obligation to divulge any information about the product, it’s form or function to anyone unless it contractually agrees to do so.
When an end user purchases proprietary equipment, the available choices of service providers and parts availability becomes very limited and can be quite costly. We recommend the purchase of non-proprietary equipment as it provides a more economical choice as a long term investment. As with parts that are proprietary, non-proprietary must conform with government standards and safety regulations so there is no fear of choosing lower quality products. Non-proprietary equipment simply allows for all companies to provide services on the elevator equipment.
With providing educational resources like this to our customers, we hope that all options are considered prior to making such a large investment decision. We also want our customers to be aware that when choosing to purchase non-proprietary equipment, it broadens maintenance options, lowers long term costs and reduces the chance of manufacturer induced product obsolesce. Unfortunately, when proprietary equipment is purchased, a buyer is tied to that manufacturer for all maintenance, repair, and future modernization projects.
If you choose to purchase non-proprietary equipment, it should be specified in your purchase agreement that the product being installed contains no proprietary hardware. We as your elevator maintenance provider and professional consultant have provided a Non-Proprietary Equipment Affidavit for your convenience to utilize.
Should you have any questions at all about non-proprietary equipment, please feel free to reach out to our offices at any time and we would be happy to help. Kencor, Inc. Elevator Systems is ready and qualified to provide, install and service non-proprietary equipment for our customers.