Honeywell Sidebar:
The Enablers
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Recognizing that employees need the right tools to do their jobs correctly, Honeywell International Inc. (HON) systematically set up processes that Chairman and CEO David M. Cote calls enablers to measure and improve work flow throughout the company. One enabler, known as the Honeywell Operating System, eliminates variation and improves work flow in the supply chain. Another enabler, called Functional Transformation, does the same for the finance, human resources, IT, legal and purchasing processes.
One of the company’s most powerful enablers, says Tim Mahoney, president and CEO of Honeywell’s aerospace division, is Velocity Product DevelopmentTM, a three-step process meant to cut product development time by gaining efficiencies in the R&D process.
Step one of the process involves having the right tools and infrastructure, Mahoney explains. He notes that Honeywell Aerospace recently invested in an ultra-high-speed computer — one of the 500 most powerful in the world — so its engineers can perform simulations rather than time-consuming physical experiments as it develops such expensive projects as jet engines.
Step two bypasses the “not invented here” syndrome. Instead of building noncore elements and tools in the projects it is developing, Honeywell outlines its needs to partners. The approach saves valuable time and is usually less costly, explains Mahoney.
Finally, with the use of Six Sigma-like checklists, each project condenses the multiple stages of a development cycle. Employees are asked to identify tasks that are traditionally performed sequentially to see which can be done concurrently. They also identify projects that can share a foundation platform, such as software that can be adapted rather than rewritten with each new avionics system. In addition, the process has been used to reconfigure factory layouts to reduce travel time between machines.
“We are deploying Velocity Product Development across all the businesses and in all 48 Honeywell R&D facilities,” explains Mahoney, noting that the aerospace division alone decreased cycle time in its development programs by 15 percent in 2009. “My division also cut $90 million from product development,” Mahoney says. “That’s money and engineering capacity that we reinvested in new projects.”
