Master Key Arrangements In large commercial, office and modern residential complexes, more often than not the need arises for control of (read - locking / unlocking of) many rooms by one person, at the same time making these rooms accessible to other persons individually. This need is best understood by an example of the multistoried hotel, which is described below. Imagine a 3-storied hotel, with 10 guest rooms on each floor. Each guest will have to be provided with a key, which can only operate the lock of the room allotted to this guest. This key should not operate any lock on the rooms of other guests. Similarly, all the guests must have a unique key with them that can operate the lock only on their room. This is to ensure that no guest can open the room, which he or she is not supposed to. If this is true, then for this hotel, we must have 30 unique keys for 30 rooms. For day-to-day work, the Bell Boy has to open all the 30 rooms everyday, clean the rooms, and lock them after the work is through. This means the Bell Boy must manage another set of 30 keys, which are similar to the ones owned by the guests. Now finding the right key in the bunch itself is inconvenient, - think of the weight and volume of 30 keys! Additionally, fear of losing one or more is another problem associated with it. These problems can be taken care of by Godrej Master key system. If the above hotel implements this system, then each guest can have an individual, unique key to his/her room, and the Bell Boy can carry only one key (called the Master key) that will open all the 30 locks!! Levels of Master Keying: Godrej offers up to three levels of master keying solutions., viz: Standard Master Key Grand Master Key Great Grand Master Key Imagine that there is a store room on each floor which keeps all the items required to maintain the guest rooms, and that now each floor has got one Bell Boy to maintain the rooms on that floor. Thus there are now three Bell Boys, who must be able to operate all the locks on their own floor, but they should not be able to open any of the locks on the other two floors. Imagine that the hotel now wants the Hotel Manager to be able to open any room (guest as well as store room) in case of emergency or as a regular inspection work. That means the Hotel Manager needs an access to 33 rooms, across three floors. In the above situation, one master key can be provided to the Bell Boy on each floor, that will open all the 11 rooms (10 guest +1 store) on his floor. Thus there will be three different Master keys in this situation (one each for a floor). This is the first level of Master keying. The Hotel Manager will have a key called the Grand Master Key that will open all the 33 rooms. This key will be the second level of master keying. Now imagine that the Hotel Owner owns another similar hotel in the city, and that he would like to have a single key that will open all the rooms in both the hotel buildings. He can be given such a key, which will be the third level of master keying, and is known as Great Grand Master Key. Common Key Arrangements (Keyed Alike Locks): Take a case of housing complex, which has common facility / recreation center. It is necessary that this center be made accessible only to the housing complex residents and not to the outsiders and therefore the entry is restricted by way of a lock on the main entrance door. In such a case, the lock at the entrance door of this center can be given multiple keys, so that each resident of the housing complex carries one of them and all of them are able to open the same lock with their key. Godrej can provide such extra keys as per the requirement. Now imagine that there is another gate, which leads to this center and also needs a lock. Godrej can provide another lock on this gate as well (this is called Common Keyed lock) which will be operable by the same key with the residents that operates the main entrance to the facility. In other words, Godrej can provide a set of locks with identical internal mechanism which will be operable with identical key/s. Another example to understand the Masterkeying systems A large house or a villa has got locks as follows: One on main entrance door, One on the door to backyard One each on three bedrooms One storeroom, One each on two garages Normally, the house owner will be required to carry 8 keys. If all the locks have a Common Key arrangement (also known as Keyed Alike), she will carry only one key, which will operate all the locks. If this house owner has got three children who need to have access only to the following (and no other room), One to their own room, One to the main door and One to the backyard door, - then it is possible for each one of the children to have just one key that will operate only the locks on main door, the backyard door and their own room (Master Key), while the house owner carries another key (Grand Master Key) which will operate all the 8 locks! The examples above have been simplified for understanding of the concepts of Master Keys and Common Keys. In real life the requirements of the accessibility can be quite complicated and Godrej has the capability to offer solutions to such complex needs.

Sophistication of the Locking Mechanism and cost Master Key solutions come in variety of locking mechanisms (and therefore the cost of a particular Master Key solution will vary from that of the other) from simple Lever mechanisms to sophisticated Ultra mechanisms depending upon the complexity and dimension of the access control system required. Costs, time period of delivery suggestion on the mechanism, type of lock for any such requirement can be known from Godrej on receipt of complete details from the customer. If you have any such requirements, please write to us at locksmkt@godrej.com