On the Record with DEAN FLATT, PRESIDENT, AEROSPACE ELECTRONIC SYSTEMS, HONEYWELL
AEROSPACE
When times are good, there's always money to be had for research
and development, plus introduction of new products. But it is
when the economy is in decline that a company just can't afford
to skimp on new product development and customer initiatives.
That's the view of Honeywell's Dean Flatt, who is in his second
year as head of the company's electronics efforts. Expected sales
for the division this year will be about $4 billion-flat, compared
to last year.
"Despite the fact we're going through a downturn we're still
spending about $400 million in engineering development efforts,"
said Flatt, who added that commercial and military customers are
paying Honeywell another $375 million on top of that for independent
engineering development. "That's about stable with last year.
We're trying to hold up our investment during these times."
The key to such investments is that they lead to products that
are "more productive, economically efficient while providing
safety and reliability."
Honeywell's aerospace electronics investments fall in three main
product areas: systems integration, aviation safety, and precision
guidance.
The Primus Epic program for business and regional jets is at the
center of the electronics group's system integration efforts.
The integrated avionics suite is poised for certification on four
aircraft: Gulfstream 550, Dassault Falcon 900EX, Cessna Sovereign
and the Embraer 170.
Said Flatt, regarding Primus Epic: "We're continuing to drive
the basic computer to help implement savings in weight, space
and power consumption, as well as better human-machine interface
for the pilots."
Honeywell also plans to drive Primus Epic "downmarket"
into the general aviation field with a Primus Epic-derived system
called Apex, which includes many of the fault-tolerant and redundant
software capabilities available to business and regional aviation.
In the area of aviation safety, Honeywell is working to introduce
a new product called AESS (aircraft environment surveillance system),
which will combine enhanced ground proximity warning, traffic
collision alerting and weather radar all in one box, and with
software that sorts out potential conflicting demands of EGPWS,
TCAS and weather radar.
Another Honeywell product certain to be introduced in the next
couple years is RAAS (runway awareness and alerting system), which
is designed to help reduce runway incursions-a vexing problem
in the U.S., in particular, because the number of incidents stubbornly
refuses to decline, even with the introduction of new technologies.
RAAS is a database of all runways in the world that an aircraft
or airline can expect to see. It tells pilots which runway they
are approaching, how much runway they have left when they land
and while rolling down the runway, and if they are traveling faster
than 40 kts while still on a taxiway.
Some initial tests on RAAS have been done with United, and Air
France has the system in a simulator, said Flatt.
The third leg of the stool, precision guidance, has become increasingly
important to all companies with defense department business. A
major effort within Honeywell Aerospace Electronics is to use
MEMs (microelectronic machines) to shrink a 26 cubic-inch ring
laser gyro box down to two cubic inches.
"As we saw in Iraq with the JDAM guided weapon, we want to
make every weapon smart, and to do that we must get smaller,"
said Flatt. "We want to go from a ring laser gyro to a gyro
on a chip."
Honeywell's initiatives in systems integration, aviation safety,
and precision guidance fall into the category of what Flatt calls
"game changing technologies," and the company's goal is
continue as a leader in all three.
