Honeywell

Honeywell International, Inc. is an American multinational conglomerate company that produces a variety of commercial and consumer products, engineering services and aerospace systems for a wide variety of customers, from private consumers to major corporations and governments.

Honeywell is a Fortune 100 company; in 2012 it was listed as 77th in the Fortune 500 America's ranking. Honeywell has a global workforce of approximately 130,000, of whom approximately 58,000 are employed in the United States. The company is headquartered in Morristown, New Jersey. Its current chief executive officer is David M. Cote. The company and its corporate predecessors were part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index from December 7, 1925, until February 9, 2008.

The company's current name, Honeywell International Inc., is the product of a merger in which Honeywell Inc. was acquired by the much larger AlliedSignal in 1999. The company headquarters were consolidated with AlliedSignal's headquarters in Morristown, New Jersey; however the combined company chose the name "Honeywell" because of its superior brand recognition.

Honeywell has many brands that commercial and retail consumers may recognize, including its line of home thermostats (particularly the iconic round type) and Garrett turbochargers.

History

Honeywell came into being through the invention of the damper flapper, a thermostat for coal furnaces, by Albert Butz, in 1885 and subsequent innovations in electric motors and process control by Minneapolis Heat Regulator Company tracing back to 1886. In 1906, Mark C. Honeywell founded Honeywell Heating Specialty Co., Inc. in Wabash, Indiana. Honeywell's company merged with Minneapolis Heat Regulator Company in 1927. The merged company was called the Minneapolis-Honeywell Regulator Company. Honeywell was its first president, W.R. Sweatt its first chairman.

William and Harold Sweatt

W.R. Sweatt and his son Harold provided 75 years of uninterrupted leadership for the company. W.R. Sweatt survived rough spots and turned an innovative idea â€" thermostatic heating control â€" into a thriving business. Harold, who took over in 1934, led Honeywell through a period of growth and global expansion that set the stage for Honeywell to become a global technology leader.

For more than 30 years the company annually presented the "H.W. Sweatt Engineer-Scientist Award" to individuals in recognition of their outstanding technical ability and contribution to technical accomplishment of significance for the company and their profession. The award program was canceled after the AlliedSignal and Honeywell merger in 1999.

James H. Binger

James H. Binger joined Honeywell in 1943, and became its president in 1961 and its chairman in 1965. On becoming Chairman of Honeywell, Binger revamped the company sales approach, placing emphasis on profits rather than on volume. He also stepped up the company's international expansion â€" it had six plants producing 12% of the company's revenue. He also officially changed the company's corporate name from "Minneapolis-Honeywell Regulator Co." to "Honeywell".

From the 1950s until the mid-1970s, Honeywell was the United States' importer of Pentax cameras and photographic equipment. These products were labeled Honeywell Pentax in the US. Under Binger's stewardship from 1961 to 1978 he expanded the company into such fields as defense, aerospace and computing.

In 1953, in co-operation with the USAF Wright Air Development Center, Honeywell developed an automated control unit that could control an aircraft through various stages of a flight, from taxiing, to takeoff, to the point where the aircraft neared its destination and the pilot took over for landing. Called the "Automatic Master Sequence Selector", the onboard control operated similarly to a player piano to relay instructions to the aircraft's autopilot at certain way points during the flight, significantly reducing the pilot's workload. Technologically, this effort had parallels to contemporary efforts in missile guidance and numerical control.

Computing

Honeywell originally entered the computer business via a joint venture with Raytheon called Datamatic Corp., but soon bought out Raytheon's share and the business became a Honeywell division, Honeywell Information Systems. The computer itself was called the Honeywell 800, later updated to the Honeywell 1800.

Honeywell also purchased minicomputer pioneer Computer Control Corporation (3C's), renaming it as Honeywell's Computer Control Division. Through most of the 1960s, Honeywell was one of the so-called "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" of computing, IBM being "Snow White", and the "Dwarfs" the seven significantly smaller computer companies: Burroughs, Control Data Corporation, General Electric, Honeywell, NCR, RCA and UNIVAC. Later, when their number had been reduced to five; they were known as "The BUNCH", after their initials: Burroughs, UNIVAC, NCR, Control Data Corporation, and Honeywell.

In 1963, Honeywell introduced a small business computer, the Honeywell 200, to compete with IBM's 1401. That began a product line that continued until the early 1970s.

In 1970, General Electric sold its computer systems division to Honeywell. The company was reorganized into two operating units, one of which was Honeywell Information Systems, headed by President Clarence (Clancy) Spangle. With the acquisition, Honeywell took over responsibility for GE's ongoing Multics operating system project. The design and features of Multics greatly influenced the Unix operating system. Multics also influenced many of the features of Honeywell/GE's GECOS and GCOS8 General Comprehensive Operating System operating systems.

In the early 1970s, Honeywell, France's Groupe Bull and Control Data Corporation formed a joint venture in Magnetic Peripherals Inc., which became a major player in the hard disk drive market. It was the worldwide leader in 14-inch disk drive technology in the OEM marketplace in the 1970s and early 1980s, especially with its SMD (Storage Module Drive) and CMD (Cartridge Module Drive) products.

In 1980, Honeywell bought Incoterm Corporation to compete in in both the Airline reservations system networks and bank teller markets. Next, Honeywell developed the first Digital Process Communications protocol for its smart transmitters used in process measurement. Since then, smart communication protocols have evolved into various standardized types, such as the HART protocol and DE protocol. In 1989, Honeywell's computer division was sold to Groupe Bull. The new company was named Bull HN, and later referred to as simply "Bull".

Defense interests

Honeywell entered the defense industry in World War II, at first producing aerospace elements. During and after the Vietnam Era, Honeywell's defense division produced a number of products, including cluster bombs, missile guidance systems, napalm, and land mines. Minnesota Honeywell Corporation completed flight tests on an inertia guidance sub-system for the X-20 project at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, utilizing an NF-101B Voodoo by August 1963. The X-20 project was canceled in December 1963. The Honeywell Project, founded in 1968, organized protests against the company to persuade it to abandon weapons production.

In 1990, Honeywell's defense division was spun off into Alliant Techsystems. Honeywell continues to supply aerospace products including electronic guidance systems, cockpit instrumentation, lighting, and primary propulsion and secondary power turbine engines.

In 1996, Honeywell acquired Duracraft and began marketing its products in the home comfort sector. Today, Kaz Incorporated owns both Duracraft and Honeywell's home comfort lines.

Honeywell is in the consortium that runs the Pantex Plant that assembles all of the nuclear bombs in the United States arsenal. Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies, successor to the defense products of AlliedSignal, operates the Kansas City Plant which produces and assembles 85 percent of the non-nuclear components of the bombs.

Performance Materials and Technologies

Honeywell's Performance Materials and Technologies business can trace its heritage to a small sulfuric acid company started by chemist William H. Nichols in 1870. By the end of the 19th century, Nichols had formed several companies and was recognized as a force in America's fledgling chemical industry. Nichols's vision of a bigger, better chemical company took off when he teamed up with investor Eugene Meyer in 1920. Nichols and Meyer combined five smaller chemical companies to create the Allied Chemical & Dye Company, which later became Allied Chemical Corp., and eventually became part of AlliedSignal, the forerunner of Honeywell's Performance Materials and Technologies business. Meyer went on to serve in the Coolidge, Hoover, and Truman administrations and to buy the Washington Post newspaper in 1933. Both he and Nichols have buildings named after them in Honeywell's headquarters in Morristown, New Jersey. Darius Adamczyk is the current President and CEO of the Performance Materials and Technologies division.

GE-Honeywell merger attempt

General Electric announced in 2000 it would attempt to acquire Honeywell; at the time, Honeywell was valued at over $21 billion. The merger was cleared by American authorities but was blocked by the European Commission's competition commissioner, Mario Monti, on July 3, 2001. This decision was taken on the grounds that with GE's dominance of the large jet engine market (led by the General Electric CF34 turbofan engine), its leasing services (GECAS), and Honeywell's portfolio of regional jet engines and avionics, the new company would be able to "bundle" products and stifle competition through the creation of a horizontal monopoly. US regulators disagreed, finding that the merger would improve competition and reduce prices; United States Assistant Attorney General Charles James called the EU's decision "antithetical to the goals of antitrust law enforcement".

In 2007, General Electric acquired Smiths Aerospace, which had a similar product portfolio.

Recent history

The current "Honeywell International Inc." is the product of a merger between AlliedSignal and Honeywell Inc. in 1999. Although AlliedSignal was twice the size of Honeywell, the combined company chose the name "Honeywell" because of its superior brand recognition. However, the corporate headquarters were consolidated to AlliedSignal's headquarters in Morristown, New Jersey rather than Honeywell's former headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota. When Honeywell closed its corporate headquarters in Minneapolis, over 1,000 employees lost their jobs. A few moved to Morristown or other company locations, but the majority were forced to find new jobs or retire. Soon after the merger, the company's stock fell significantly, and did not return to its pre-merger level until 2007.

In January 2002 Knorr-Bremse, who had been operating in a joint venture with Honeywell International Inc., assumed full ownership of Honeywell's ventures in Europe, Brazil and the US. Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems became a subsidiary of Knorr-Bremse AG. Although declining in influence, Honeywell maintains a presence in emerging industries, such as Northern Alberta's oil sands. Honeywell's Plant Integrator is currently deployed in some of the most important plant-sites in the oil sands (Syncrude, Suncor and others).

In December 2004, Honeywell made a £1.2bn ($2.3bn) bid for Novar plc. The acquisition was finalized on March 31, 2005.

In January 2013, Honeywell shut its subsidiary Ex-Or's factory in Haydock, Merseyside, UK.

Honeywell Technology Solutions

Honeywell Technology Solutions (HTS) is an R&D (research and development) division within Honeywell dedicated to innovative product research. HTS is headquartered in Bangalore, India with an employee strength of over 11000. HTS has development Centers in Hyderabad (India), Madurai (India), Shanghai (China), and Brno (Europe, Czech Republic). Most of the flight management systems are made and tested at these labs. HTS offers technological and R&D services to the various business units of Honeywell International, mainly Aerospace, Automation and Control Solutions (ACS), Performance Materials and Technologies and Transportation Systems. Recently the company started producing car parts also such as radiators and turbochargers.

Corporate governance

Source:

Products and services

Aircraft

• Honeywell RQ-16 T-Hawk

Missiles and rockets

• RUR-5 ASROC
• Wagtail (missile)

Acquisitions

Honeywell's acquisitions have largely of businesses aligned with the company's existing technologies. The acquired companies are integrated into one of Honeywell's three business groups (Aerospace, Automation and Control Solutions (ACS), or Performance Materials and Technologies (PMT)) but retain their original brand name.

Environmental record

The United States Environmental Protection Agency states that no corporation has been linked to a greater number of Superfund toxic waste sites than has Honeywell. Honeywell ranks 44th in a list of US corporations most responsible for air pollution, releasing more than 4.25 million kg (9.4 million pounds) of toxins per year into the air. In 2001, Honeywell agreed to pay $150,000 in civil penalties and to perform $772,000 worth of reparations for environmental violations involving:

• failure to prevent or repair leaks of hazardous organic pollutants into the air
• failure to repair or report refrigeration equipment containing chlorofluorocarbons
• inadequate reporting of benzene, ammonia, nitrogen oxide, dichlorodifluoromethane, sulfuric acid, sulfur dioxide, and caprolactam emissions

In 2003, a federal judge in Newark, New Jersey ordered the company to perform an estimated $400 million environmental remediation of chromium waste, citing "a substantial risk of imminent damage to public health and safety and imminent and severe damage to the environment." In the same year, Honeywell paid $3.6 million to avoid a federal trial regarding its responsibility for trichloroethylene contamination in Lisle, Illinois. In 2004, the State of New York announced that it would require Honeywell to complete an estimated $448 million cleanup of more than 74,000 kg (165,000 lbs) of mercury and other toxic waste dumped into Onondaga Lake in Syracuse, NY. In 2005, the state of New Jersey sued Honeywell, Occidental Petroleum, and PPG to compel cleanup of more than 100 sites contaminated with chromium, a metal linked to lung cancer, ulcers, and dermatitis. In 2008, the state of Arizona made a settlement with Honeywell to pay a $5 million fine and contribute $1 million to a local air-quality cleanup project, after allegations of breaking water-quality and hazardous-waste laws on hundreds of occasions between the years of 1974 and 2004.

In 2006, Honeywell announced that its decision to stop manufacturing mercury switches had resulted in reductions of more than 11,300 kg, 2800 kg, and 1500 kg respectively of mercury, lead, and chromic acid usage. The largest reduction represents 5% of mercury use in the United States. The EPA acknowledged Honeywell's leadership in reducing mercury use through a 2006 National Partnership for Environmental Priorities (NPEP) Achievement Award for discontinuing the manufacturing of mercury switches.

Criticism

On March 10, 2013 the WSJ reported that Honeywell was one of sixty companies that shielded annual profits from U.S. taxes. In December 2011, the non-partisan liberal organization Public Campaign criticized Honeywell International for spending $18.3 million on lobbying and not paying any taxes during 2008â€"2010, instead getting $34 million in tax rebates, despite making a profit of $4.9 billion, laying off 968 workers since 2008, and increasing executive pay by 15% to $54.2 million in 2010 for its top 5 executives. Honeywell has been criticized in the past for its manufacture of deadly and maiming weapons, such as cluster bombs.

See also

• Electronics for Medicine
• Garrett AiResearch
• Honeywell Aerospace
• Honeywell Turbo Technologies
• Honeywell 316
• Novar plc
• Trend Controls
• Sperry Corporation
• Top 100 US Federal Contractors
• CYBRA
• The Mircom Group of Companies

References

External links

Official web site - Honeywell.com