Honeywell's Big Picture for the Future

Mike Smith, VP and general manager of Honeywell's Business and Commuter Aviation Systems unit, has a very clear vision for the division's future. Smith and his BCAS team want to have a much broader involvement in aviation than just avionics. They want to leverage BCAS's avionics technology and certification expertise to develop other aviation products and services. BCAS intends to provide pre-flight-to-post-flight, total systems solutions for the aviation community.

Why this change in direction? "It was clear that we had to do things differently in terms of focus," Smith explained. The up and down cycles of the aircraft industry have subjected BCAS's business revenues to a roller-coaster ride of profit and loss.

"Wall Street doesn't like companies linked to cycles of new aircraft production," he said. "Clearly, we needed to come up with a more balanced business model." Diversification was the answer.

"We took on growth initiatives to expand into other, adjacent markets not attached to the same up and down cycles," he said.

"But we cannot do it all within the four walls of Honeywell," Smith conceded. This has led the firm to develop strategic alliances with "world-class" companies to spread development risks and costs, he said. Such partnerships include Racal for satcom products, GEC-Marconi for the HUD 2020, Polaris for satellite landing systems, Trimble for GPS-based navigation systems, and Canadian-Marconi for GPS navigation sensors. As result, BCAS is the midst of a lot of change. "We're becoming very agile and we're very resilient," Smith said.

Honeywell has diversified into seven different market segments: airport systems, aviation services, com/nav/surveillance air traffic management, commercial space, military ground vehicle electronics, railway electronics, and commercial off-the-shelf products for government applications. "It just makes good financial, business and logical sense." Smith said.

BCAS has reordered its priorities, too. Formerly, Honeywell focused on developing the latest products and systems technologies. Now, BCAS also focuses on process improvements, such as design, development and manufacturing productivity increases and upgraded customer service, according to Smith. High priority, in other words, is being given to designing and building products for better reliability, lower maintenance burden, and reduced life-cycle costs.

"We now have a customer-centric focus," Smith said, "because the customer ultimately pays the bills."

By Fred George