On the Record with
BOB JOHNSON, PRESIDENT AND CEO, HONEYWELL AEROSPACE

Solo Honeywell is 'Excited' About Future

"Our company was not for sale, and it is not for sale now." That's the proclamation of Bob Johnson, president and CEO of Honeywell Aerospace.

"It is important to realize the proposed GE merger is behind us. It was a wonderful opportunity; it didn't work, but we learned a lot," he told Show News. "We're putting a punctuation mark behind it; it's over, it's done. We're really very excited about having all of our body parts still with us--we're glad we didn't have to divest any of them" as requested by the U.S. as a condition of the merger.

Johnson is excited by many things, from Honeywell's raft of new products to its prospects for the future.

"I'm excited to be the leader of our businesses right in the middle of both unparalleled growth in the past 10 years, and, according to our new forecast, another growth period into the next decade.

"While there are some caution signals here in the short term, the industry enters this economic slowdown with great backlog, and with great needs to make the industry better, so let's remember there's a wonderful opportunity in front of us.

"We have introduced new avionics, new engines, new products. The AS900 turbofan is flying very successfully on the RJX and Continental, Primus Epic has flown very successfully on some of its first applications ­ it's on 12 airframes across a great number of platforms--and it's had a 100% win rate," Johnson said.

"We're making new engines, new systems that extend the cockpit into the systems of the aircraft, introducing APEX avionics for the general aviation market--so I couldn't be more excited."

As for the business itself, it has emerged stronger and smarter from what Johnson describes as "eight or nine months of consulting with GE--during which time both our companies learned a lot from each other."

Honeywell is now applying new skills in digitizing its processes all the way through from customer to supplier, and applying metrics more broadly. The result? Greater customer satisfaction. "We move very fast when we see a way to do something better," Johnson said.

-John Morris