Honeywell Avient Technologies

The "new Honeywell" has formed a new group within its Aerospace Electronic Systems (AES) unit, called Avient Technologies. Headed by Barry Siadat, Avient is on the same level as the company's commercial and defense electronic groups. The name stands for "Aviation Enterprise." What makes the picture interesting is that Honeywell is hinting at what Avient will do, rather than making formal statements.

Avient is one of the projects to emerge as a result of the new Honeywell's reappraisal of its strengths and combined skills. It reflects the company's belief that it needs to move into new business areas in order to grow at a greater rate than the aircraft manufacturers -- and its rivals.

Avient, says AES president and CEO Mike Smith, is intended "to address issues that the airlines have with reference to delays, congestion and operations." For Honeywell, the formation of Avient represents a move "into airline management tools."
Frank Daly, president of the Commercial Electronic Systems unit of AES, comments that "the congestion factor is beyond where we should have allowed it to get. It's time to get off the mark in terms of analyzing solutions, and offer something to the market. There are solutions that we can bring to bear as a combined company." Daly describes Avient as a "heavily matrixed" organization that includes AES' defense and space unit, adding that the company is "working with two or three airlines to set up beta sites."

Avient crops up again when Mike Carman, vice-president and general manager for airline and avionics products, talks about "proactive safety"-using technology to improve the safety of flight operations. With its expertise in flight recorders and datalinks, Honeywell is positioned to explore the emerging markets of FOQA and MOQA-respectively, flight and maintenance operations quality assurance. This is technology that allows the airline to monitor, in real time or close to it, how its aircraft are being used and maintained. Other Honeywell products include networked weather information systems, which could provide airlines with advance warning of situations that could cause hazards or delays.

Other Honeywell executives hint that Avient will see Honeywell operate as an Internet service provider (ISP) and as an application service provider (ASP). In the latter role, Avient Technologies would provide, maintain and upgrade software that its customers would use to support their operations. "In some cases, we'll be a partner for the airline," says Honeywell Aerospace president Bob Johnson. "We won't be dropping a piece of software on them."

Johnson says that the launch of Avient has come about as a result of surveys and advice from consultants. Honeywell's airline customers, he says, want to make their operations more efficient, and are looking for ways to reduce delays and cancellations. Also, he says, Honeywell's consultants in the merger-Mercer Management Consultants-identified the Avient market in a way that he sums up as "if you want to make a difference, here it is."

So what is Avient? More details could emerge at Farnborough, but it appears that Honeywell is looking at systems which allow airlines to see all the data that airplanes and even airports can generate- from mechanical faults to weather and gate status-and use that data to improve their operations and substitute control for chaos when things go wrong. Honeywell is already offering its Gatelink system to provide high bandwidth communications between the aircraft and the airline's ground-based information systems.
Rather than trying to develop their own tools in-house to handle the increasingly complex flow of data, they can airlines to a single provider-Avient-to do the job. Johnson sees Avient as something that "wraps around" Honeywell's existing systems, its products and the MyAircraft.com business-to-business venture.

By Bill Sweetman