Safety, security still top priorities for Honeywell

Honeywell looks to make the correct decisions to keep plants safe and secure and running continuously

By Gregory Hale, ISS Source July 8, 2011

“Our focus has been and will continue to be on solution whether they are products or software that improve your safety, security, reliability, efficiency and then sustaining that,” said Norm Gilsdorf, president of Honeywell Process Solutions during his keynote address today at the Honeywell User Group in Phoenix, AZ. “That passion for those kinds of solutions will allow you to improve our operations and make better decisions. We want to improve efficiency by reducing human error; 42 percent of all incidents all track back to human error.

“We need to continue to leverage input to make operators safer and more effective.”

Part of using leverage is to work with partners and making sure they are able to collaborate effectively.

There are external partnerships like the ones with SAP, Microsoft and IBM and there are internal partnerships like with Honeywell Life Safety and the Honeywell Security Group.

With the Honeywell Security Group, “we have taken their camera technology and their security and barrier technology and integrated it into the Experion system. This way the operator can have better view of the asset and better knowledge of what is going on, “ Gilsdorf said.

With the mindset of collaboration, Gilsdorf said Honeywell is changing with the times.

“We have evolved from an automation company to a business transformation company. How we can use our technology, our people and our processes to enable users to make faster decisions, better decisions. Decisions in the remote access areas and make decisions that will improve the user’s profitability.”

Part of that evolution is understanding the trends in the industry.

One of the top trends Gilsdorf pointed out was globalization.

“Information can be moved very quickly. The boundaries that used to exist between countries have gone down to a great extent. Today, companies in the Middle East and Asia can bring products to the U.S. market to compete. The speed of decision and speed of pricing has become critical to the success of profitability. Going forward there is a lot of opportunity here because the company that can make decisions faster, with more accurate costing and accurate pricing can create a competitive advantage.

“The second trend is mobilization. This is an area that is underutilized. This is an area that brings assets together with people that can create a competitive advantage.”

Another trend Gilsdorf mentioned was integration. “Today there are a lot of disparate systems within the world, within your plant, within the process industries. They are not well connected. Think about the cell phone. It has evolved from being the Internet, your email, a camera, as well as a global positioning device. You will probably see it becoming even more moving forward. We need to bring together systems so you can make better decisions and faster decisions. Another trend is collaboration, which, with everybody’s schedules, is a very difficult area to connect.

“With all the data and information out there today it is very hard to bring together all the experts with all the information to make decisions,” Gilsdorf said. “The successful companies in the future will create collaborative networks where they get together with partners and work together within their organization to link up data and information to make decisions. “You need to maximize the use of every one of your assets so you can be in the most competitive position possible,” he said.

One of the most important assets any company has is its people. Yes, technology is vital, but people will make sure it works efficiently as possible, said Tracey Haslam, vice president Americas for Honeywell.

“People and their know-how, not just the technology, provide the mechanism for success,” she said. “Technology and people will help you build your business transformation.”