Life for Bob Johnson is moving at about a million miles a minute. After becoming president and CEO of AlliedSignal Aerospace seven months ago and entirely restructuring the world's largest supplier of aircraft engines, equipment, systems and services, he is poised for an even greater challenge: heading up the $10 billion combined aerospace businesses of AlliedSignal and Honeywell, Inc.

Having taken on what Fortune magazine ranked as "The World's Most Admired Aerospace Company," Johnson is determined to keep it that way as AlliedSignal awaits final regulatory approval to complete its $14 billion merger deal with Honeywell.

He can hardly contain his enthusiasm. "This is a quantum leap in potential. Absolutely," he told Show News. "Right now with all this excitement we're having to make sure our people and theirs don't start working together until we have all the approvals. We are restraining ourselves."

He sees a huge potential to combine AlliedSignal's safety and cockpit hazard alert systems with Honeywell's expertise in "glass cockpits" and integration of electronics and avionics systems; he believes this integration capability, along with its expertise in electronic controls and sensors, will benefit other AlliedSignal businesses such as aircraft environmental control systems, engines, and fuel and lighting systems.

"We have an exciting opportunity to put the companies together to make flight safer and more effective," Johnson said.

"The systems integration capability of Honeywell and the safety products we make will enable us from a customer standpoint to make the systems and products more interoperable, to give clearer safety messages to pilots, and to be more cost effective."

Smarter systems, better informed pilots, and more bang for the buck. The vision doesn't stop there. "From a flying standpoint the more information and data that is available in an integrated way, the more the traffic at airports becomes understandable, then we can work on the next phase of relieving some congestion around the airports" through better and safer utilization of airspace.

"Because we make a broad range of sensors throughout the airplane that give messages about the status of various equipment, there's also an opportunity here to provide integrated status messages about maintenance requirements so the whole airplane can be more efficient, especially as we move toward free flight. These systems can be a relief to congestion through better traffic planning, and by providing uplinking and downlinking of information," Johnson said.

So add to the other advantages more efficient use of airplanes and airspace. That means better utilization of assets, fewer flight delays and more on-time departures. That all adds up to happier customers. And that is what AlliedSignal is all about, what made it "The Most Admired Company."

It's not a case of philanthropy, though. Satisfied customers become loyal, repeat customers, and if the business serving them is lean, nimble, straightforward and responsive, then shareholders benefit too. The combined Honeywell International has already targeted earnings per share growth greater than 15%, revenue growth of 8-10%, and free cash flow exceeding $2 billion by 2002.

"Combining Honeywell's proven strengths with those of AlliedSignal will enable us to reduce cyclicality while enhancing earnings consistency," AlliedSignal chairman and CEO Larry Bossidy explained earlier this year.

AlliedSignal Aerospace's recent realignment ar was designed to bring a better and closer focus on the customer as it identified three markets--air transport, regional and general aviation, and space and defense--and organized its activities into four businesses to service them: landing systems, engines and systems, avionics and lighting, and service businesses.

"I would say we had practice in the first half of the year doing a merger with ourselves," Johnson said. "There are some experts who say merging with yourself can be more complex and challenging than merging with another company." So Johnson is confident as he looks to the challenge of combining with Honeywell. The company has 130 teams studying successful and unsuccessful mergers, large and small, to identify best and worst practices.

"We completed our realignment in the second quarter rather seamlessly, and without disruption to our customers," Johnson explained. "It happened even faster than we thought; we now have simpler line-of-sight supply chains, and in the process became more cost effective."

Extensive studies of Honeywell have convinced him of many similarities between the two companies, especially in their approach toward best practices and quality programs. "This merger will go quite well," he predicted.

By John Morris