www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/blog/techflash/2016/07/exclusive-former-honeywell-executive-talks-furlou.html
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Let's be clear about one thing. That technology was not developed by Honeywell. One of the main reasons that they are going down is because of their refusal to invest in R & D. If you don't invest in the future, then there will be no future. Thanks DC.
DR knows this stuff as he was one of the architects:
They will go away entirely I expect when their key employees retire and their work will be picked up by offices in Houston and overseas
NetGrowth Partners COO Dave Ryan knows all too well about downsizing and furlough issues affecting Honeywell International Inc.
NetGrowth Partners COO Dave Ryan knows all too well about downsizing and furlough issues affecting Honeywell International Inc.
After 22 years at the Phoenix-based Honeywell Aerospace, he was hit by downsizing in 2012. He left the company as the global sales operations leader for sales tools and metrics in the process solutions business.
Ryan ended up working with another Honeywell alumnae Jennifer Webster to create NetGrowth Partners in 2013, a Scottsdale consulting company.
As a former Honeywell and General Electric employee before that, he has no complaints about either firm, but wanted to give perspective on what today's employees dealing with the same issues are likely going through.
Morris Plains, New Jersey-based Honeywell (NYSE: HON) employees had a skeleton crew last week when the majority of its 9,500 Arizona employees were forced to take an unpaid week off.
Honeywell employees also had a weeklong furlough between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
"One thing that stood out to me then and now about the Phoenix operations is that we are very vulnerable to (Honeywell) just gradually shrinking to just a few thousand people," Ryan said exclusively to the Phoenix Business Journal in an email. "(Honeywell) has already shrunk from about 19,000 to 20,000, to just 9,500 now, in the last 15 years."
Ryan's process solutions division experienced a three-week furlough during the Great Recession. While he missed the salary, he added he was able to use the off time to his advantage and got to do things he would not have otherwise.
His division was at 3,000 employees when he joined in 2003 from the aerospace division. By the time he left, the division was down to 400 people and is even smaller now, he said.
"They will go away entirely I expect when their key employees retire and their work will be picked up by offices in Houston and overseas," said Ryan, a Phoenix resident. "I was on the move team closing our Union Hills facility to cram the remaining few hundred process solutions people into the aerospace avionics facility at 19th Avenue and Deer Valley. At that time, the corporate planning people referred to us as a 'terminal location.' I'm not totally positive what that means, but it is not a good thing."
In May when the furloughs were announced, Scott Sayres, communications director for Honeywell Aerospace, said the company was "implementing some short-term cost controls in light of the slower global economy and recent aerospace industry-wide market challenges and volatility as noted by many of our biggest customers."
Ryan has some parting advice for whomever will listen.
"As the average wage in Arizona continues to drop, it is the loss of high-paying jobs like at Honeywell that will continue that progression," Ryan said. "Our state needs to make it attractive for these companies or they will migrate quietly to greener pastures outside of Arizona."
Honeywell Aerospace employs about 10,000 people with about a $1 billion total payroll at 12 facilities across Arizona.
In 2014, the company celebrated 100 years of Honeywell innovations that contributed to military aircraft and spacecraft and made commercial planes a safe and efficient form of transportation. Now, virtually every aircraft from nose to tail includes technology from Honeywell.
That was a short story.