Patent ID: 7194415

Claim:
A support system to allow a consumer to obtain an offer of a plurality of selectable termed commercial maintenance contracts for elevator maintenance, comprising: a load prediction database storing load-values of previously known elevator sites, the load-values being stored in relation to values of a plurality of predetermined site-characteristics known to affect load-values; a maintenance contract database storing terms of maintenance contracts, ones of the terms being stored in relation to predetermined-load-values; a consumer input unit to poll a consumer to input site-values of at least a sub-plurality of the predetermined site-characteristics, pertaining to a consumer elevator site for which the offer of the plurality of selectable termed commercial maintenance contracts for elevator maintenance is desired; a load predicting-unit to utilize inputted site-values and the load prediction database, to automatically predict a site-load-value of the consumer elevator site; a maintenance plan setup-unit to utilize the predicted site-load-value and the maintenance contract database to automatically assemble the plurality of termed commercial maintenance contractual plans, with each termed commercial maintenance contractual plan having a different total failure occurrence probability; and a maintenance plan selecting-unit to allow the consumer to select a desired termed commercial maintenance contractual plan from said plurality of termed commercial maintenance contractual plans.