Weblog - Honeywell ArchivesJune 1, 2010 and previous
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Honeywell - read the original article. The Honeywell saga started first as the possible sale of the controls division to Siemens, then the merger of the whole enchilada with United Technologies and then ended a couple of days later with the sale to GE - all in less than a week! GE backed out of the merger, CEO Bonsignore was booted, Bossidy of Allied took over, and then handed over to a new, tough CEO, David Cote. Now, how is Honeywell doing? |
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Honeywell Industrial Systems - the GE-Honeywell fiasco updated Sept. 2003 in Jim Pinto's latest book Automation Unplugged. Read the Table of Contents. |
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Tuesday, June 1, 2010
The May 30 blogger is no doubt correct in his assertion that the 'old' Honeywell was a good place to work and that the 'new' Honeywell will not change. But I, for one, have no intention of slipping quietly into the night. Those who have experienced firsthand the way 'new' Honeywell craps on its employees have a nearly sacred obligation to ensure that the true nature of the beast is fully revealed. Existing employees need to be fully aware how widespread this is, so that they may adjust their expectations and career plans accordingly. And more power to those who choose a path with a company that actually values its employees instead of viewing them as liabilities to be abused at every opportunity. Potential future employees likewise need a means to evaluate what they're getting in to before it's too late. Nothing would be more appropriate than if this ultimately causes Honeywell to lose good employees to its competitors, or if potential future employees choose a competitor instead of Honeywell. Call it poetic justice. Perhaps one day the cumulative effect of these losses will become visible to the government, to customers, to competitors, and to Wall Street. Then the pitiful stuffed shirts masquerading as executive management will finally be forced to recognize that valuing employees requires more than lip-service if the company is to remain viable. Tuesday, June 1, 2010 The truth about outsourcing as I see it. It's a simple formula.
Sunday, May 30, 2010 - From: Don Anthony Husted [dahusted@aol.com]: To the posting on May 19 that said “Morristown is unaware of the level of favoritism shown in promotions and advancements” in Aerospace and Phoenix. Wrong. Morristown is well aware of it and it is how Allied operates. And to the May 20 posting that said “Remember when they said that their people were their most valuable asset.” You are thinking of the old Honeywell, not the new Allied that calls itself Honeywell. When Signal Companies merged with Allied many years ago, people who knew Allied told people at UOP that we would be sorry. Allied treated their people like dirt and only the biggest SOB’s got promoted. For a time UOP was protected from Allied because Signal Companies (fka Signal Oil and Gas) knew UOP and the UOP business model, and later by Union Carbide and later Dow Chemical. But over time UOP has gotten use to the boot of Allied on its neck, that is why you do not see too many postings from the Allied side of “Honeywell”. The ones who would post are long gone to competitors, or retired. It appears to me most of the postings on this site are from old Honeywell. I never worked for Honeywell but from what I have read it was a good company to work for. However all, you now work for Allied. Get use to it. It is their style of business. If you want to move up in Allied (aka “Honeywell”) you need to play the game. Be the biggest SOB in your department. Or find a position with a competitor who treats its people like human beings. Allied will not change, so accept being dirt, or move on to another company or retire. It will do you no good to complain to your boss or to post to this site. Monday, May 24, 2010 All of the comments on this site can either be construed as constructive criticism to be used as lessons learned for changes and/or improvements, or as unwarranted attacks to be ignored. Unfortunately, given the arrogance and mindset of the almighty, infallible and beyond reproach leadership, only the latter view will be observed, because admitting that they may have made mistakes, or that they may need to change course, or rethink any of their strategies, is akin to alcoholics or drug-addicts admitting that they have a problem The past two years especially, has shown how determined and uncompromising their decision making has become, regardless of any negative impact to the business or their workforce. But they can take comfort in the knowledge that they are immune to the consequences of their ways, a luxury that will never be afforded the rest of us. Like governments who can increase taxes and add service charges on the masses to compensate for fiscal mistakes and incompetence, corporate leaderships can similarly punish and bleed their workforce for their own miscues, without bringing any of the negative repercussions to bear upon themselves. Sadly, the luxury of this attitude does not allow any room for correction, change-of-course etc. because this will be construed as an admittance of mistakes being made. But don’t give up Honeywellers. People have been known to recover from lapses in judgment, and to even wake up from the dead. LOL. Of course, it has become very clear in the past two years that the leadership does not believe in the practice of “lessons learned” to change or improve anything. They have totally destroyed any and all such opportunities from decades of learning, only to start all over again with a whole new set of "unlearned lessons". Tch! They have arbitrarily adopted OS (Operating Systems) from other companies, with no regard for similarity, or lack thereof, of the business models, compared to that of our own. Some years ago they adopted TQ from Motorala. Lots in common there, to our industry! And that has now become totally irrelevant anyway. HOS has been adopted from Toyota Production System (TPS). And who are some of the other companies that have adopted this system? GM, Ford, Chrysler. And what do these companies have in common, besides recently producing products with record number of defects in their most critical component systems; breaking, accelerator, steering, tires etc.? They produce similar products. Again, lots in common with Honeywell! Ironically, one of the precepts of the TPS/HOS is that "MANAGERS DON’T TELL WORKERS AND SUPERVISORS HOW TO DO THEIR WORK". We, however, seem to have every level of management telling us how to do ours, and even what tools to use. A perfect system will never work when it is being twisted and distorted by warped minds. In fact, if you look at the TPS/HOS statement, you will notice that this company seems to be virtually violating or misinterpreting/manipulating almost every one of its precepts. They also, always have a tendency to force the vendors of our design tools to customize their tools in the worst ways to the point that the tools are no longer user-friendly and thus, deviate from their intended purpose, thereby frustrating the users and the tool providers. They seem to think that they know better than everyone else, about everything. Yet, they are incapable of originating any ideas of their own, but to blatantly plagiarize and then, indiscriminately butcher others’ ideas beyond recognition or use. They are hell bent in taking a round peg, then making it square, and then trying to force it into a round hole. They seem to be increasingly lacking in the capacity to appreciate the reality, that the operating system of a mechanic or a plumber may not necessarily be adoptable to the workings of a doctor. Except that, everybody has to flush... Maybe! Monday, May 24, 2010 - from the blogger on May 18th. "To all that are frustrated": Well, I did it. I found a job outside Honeywell. I'M FREE. To all those that keep saying, "You're lucky to have a job" - get over yourself, the market is opening up and good people will find jobs. Honeywell will lose some great people (although they won't care). It will hurt them in the long run. Good luck to all of you! Friday, May 21, 2010 - from current Honeyweller: Honeywell International not only treats their managers badly, the union workers are being treated badly as well - 10% pay cut, no retiree health care, raise in insurance, no 401k match, no pension for new hires, no time-and-half after 8 hours, no provisions for 6th and 7th, No seniority considerations, no scheduling, company put you where they want you. Honeywell can contract out any job, and those honeywell workers that lose to the contractors gets a 4500 severance package, No union security, no grievances, reduction in vacation, reduced holiday pay. It is no wonder the managers and the hourly cannot get along. Thursday, May 20, 2010 There seems to be a contradiction with Honeywell and how they treat their employees any more. Remember when they said that their people where their most valuable asset? Those days seem to be past. While Honeywell is buying companies for $140 million+ and sending out rave reviews of all their success, we are still waiting for some type of pay raise this year. I guess Mr. Cote and his cronies will get a bonus for screwing the workers again. Last year it was a 4% pay cut before taxes on our 401k match, and then the 3 weeks unpaid furlough to quickly destroy the chance of getting ahead in 2009 with the miserable pay raises dished out then. So do you think the pay raise this year (if given) will be retro (fat chance)? What makes me upset the most, is the attitude my mid level management that uses the economy to promote fear for our jobs. "At least we have a job".... and "what about the other companies"? Comparing us with other companies as an excuse to screw us, is like saying we should pay more taxes because Canadians do. Yes we can find other jobs, but I'd love to see a CEO that not only pays lip service to "caring about empolyees", but stands behind it. I dont' think I'll be attending anymore town meetings until Honeywell does the right thing for the people that really make the company what it is today.
Regards, Thursday, May 20, 2010 We have that same problem. Everybody who is in and gets promoted into management is from the hockey team. And guess who plays hockey? Wednesday, May 19, 2010 I'm really surprised when I look at our management team in Phoenix and see a only 35+ white males in seats of "power". Honeywell is a biased company. Aerospace is lead by white males who give the best jobs to their buddies. Morristown is unaware of the level of favoritism shown in promotions and advancements. Most of the diversity at Aero comes in the form of lower level Band 3 or Hourly workers. With VP making over $250K plus bonus, where is the real economic strength? It ain't in shop. It is the band 5's and above. What a waste of so much talent. Just because a person isn't white and male, they don't have a chance at a higher level position. I'm leaving and can't wait to start working with real technology company that believes in the strength of all of its people. One that promotes all kinds of people, not just club members. Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - from Olathe, Ks: One of their HOS (Honeywell Over Seas) guys should suggest that they take data on all the time they spend taking data. Maybe someone, like the stockholders would finally relize how much time and labor is wasted on data that is rarly ever used. The only useful results that I ever saw were that our productivity was down, mostly from taking data and not doing the real work. Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - Re: "Sunday, March 28, 2010 - If Honeywell is so awful, quit playing the victim and get on with your life." That's real helpful. I notice that you were unable to refute any of the comments made here. Tuesday, May 18, 2010 That's the Honeywell way.... Spend more and more time reporting on the less and less you are doing, until you achieve equilibrium by spending all your time reporting on the nothing you are doing. Tuesday, May 18, 2010 To all that are frustrated with spreadsheets and check lists, I feel your pain. My division is so immersed in these; I can't get any "real" work done. The management spends their day looking for ways to babysit our progress, and then report out on it to their leadership (I use that term loosely) . I have never felt so underappreciated. Management treats us like we are 6 years old and have no clue what we need to do to accomplish our goals. I had the opportunity to leave Honeywell and work for a competitor. I made a HUGE mistake. If you get the chance to get out do it. I'm fed up and not going to miss the next chance to get out! Tuesday, May 18, 2010 It seems like you are a victim of the HOS. All the forms, checklists, spreadsheets, whiteboards etc. created are for visitors and Corporate VIPs to look at. They are good "tools" but HON leadership and site leaders misuse them for controls only and totally ignorant of the HUMAN side of things. Do they care? Of course not, as long as Wall Street buys their stories. Sunday, May 16, 2010 To the British chap who is wondering about, and drowning in all of those magical forms, checklists, spreadsheets etc. that will solve all of the company’s problems. Employees generally feel frustrated and stressed when they are given tasks that are seemingly irrelevant to the real work, and that can’t be of much real value, if any, to anyone, other than to add check marks to a bunch of other forms, checklists, spreadsheets etc., as was suggested, and to create work for the creators of the forms. These forms were never necessary before, and they now seem to serve only as a distraction from the real work, as they obviously have not served to decrease but rather, to increase the number of defects since their imposition, all to the detriment of the company. Understandably, the leadership is trying to reduce costs and cycle time. But how, in their warped thinking, do they hope to achieve this? By adding more and more non-value-added and time consuming tasks! Brilliant! I suppose that more work equals less time? Otherwise, the sole purpose of these exercises must be for management to exert their power over us. Management seems intent on subjugating and insulting us into kindergarten level of obedience. That is perhaps why, more than anything else, we are having issues with this. They seem to think that this is the best way to apply or utilize our technical skills. We are not trusted to do anything right anymore, but management in their wisdom, seem to trust that if we have completed these forms (which are much more important than the real work!), then the underlying project will be magically correct….What? In fact, it seems as though, if we did not complete our project, but completed the forms, we may be up for a promotion! The real work does not seem to count for much anymore! So, we must fill in all of these forms (er...toilet paper!) with due diligence, and be sure to use the right color pencils, as they have to look nice or, neither us nor our managers will get the half of a balloon, or the half of a lollipop that they do not want to give to us anyway! And, they may even tell our parents if we don’t do it. We don’t want that now, do we? Arrgh! We are being weighed and measured based on the completion of these “magical money-making” forms, rather than on how much work we do, and on how well we do our work. Our obedience with regards to this, more than anything else, will determine whether or not we will receive the 0% salary increase that’s coming to us….What? So, we must be good little children now, if we know what’s good for us. Bye, bye! Friday, May 14, 2010 - Re: May 11 - former manager to Olathe Kansas site: Thank you for documenting my case as a casualty in RIF due to manager’s personal reasons. This practice is also widespread in Honeywell Process Solutions. Only “yes” men can survive in HON. Tuesday, May 11, 2010 As a former Honeywell manager, I feel as though I can finally tell the truth about all the nonsense going down in aerospace/avionics. After moving from another site to the Olathe Kansas site, I was shocked to see the horrid conditions that had been standard practice in Olathe for years. Supervisors forced into misleading comments to associates, loss of respect for anyone not management, and a backstabbing culture thru out management. Every answer to problems are dealt with through discipline, even the most trivial of mistakes. This attitude has created a morale slide that has been going on since 2003 and has gotten noticeably worse in the past year. It looks as if Dave has finally given them permission to be the SOB’s they always wanted to be, and it is the only thing they seem to be really good at. Morale has gotten so bad because of the management team that people are asking there managers to downgrade their yearly reviews so that they can volunteer for RIF’s and be accepted. During past RIF’s employees were selected based on managers personal reasons and once they were selected for sacrifice the yearly review was adjusted to fit the situation. We were told to make sure there was an overwhelming good reason to let this person go. Many time the real reason was because the person had a disagreement with some witless manager, sometimes over quality or customer issues. Most reviews were highly falsified to avoid anyone questioning the decision to let the person go. It is amazing to look at the number of managers that have retired or moved on to other jobs due to the attitude of the Olathe management crew. Many of these folks have stated that they can’t change anything for the good and their conscience will only stand so much! I sincerely hope that all U.S companies are not managed like this. (P.S. I sold all my Honeywell stock as soon as I could). Sunday, May 9, 2010 Quote from The Wall Street Journal:
And you have neglected to mention to the shareholders, the salary cuts and deferred raises and all of the other back-stabbing measures you have “executed” to demoralize the employees for a long time to come, just to realize short term gains, irrespective of long term pains! And that you extended salary cuts and imposed the furlough when everything had already improved. And that perhaps the most skilled 25% of your work force would really like a layoff package this time, but that you are too cheap to offer packages, as they will cut into those bogus short term gains being bled from the employees (your lifeline). And that the 5% number is very deceiving, when all of the layoffs of skilled employees are in NA, and are being offset by all of the hiring of trainees offshore. We know that neither you nor the shareholders care to know any of those inconvenient truths. Nice! If you’re happy, and the shareholders are happy, what else can anyone else ask for? What…are…you…doing---Dave? Thursday, May 6, 2010 I have been free of Honeywell for 6 months, but when I was a hiring manager, you had to get approval of the CEO to hire even a temp. In addition to this not being a best practice in delegation of decision rights, I think that unless the new hire had a Phoenix address, chances are he would come under great scrutiny and the request would be denied. I know this because we got email after email announcing promotions and reorganizations among that same clubhouse full of clowns out in Phoenix moving from one job to the next, doing nothing for the company. Good luck to all you guys still there. It is so much better on the other side. When you work for a company that thinks employees are a liability and looks for every chance it gets to steal back benefits and compensation, it is enough to make you sick every day. But the good part is people on the outside still recognize the Honeywell name on the resume. It should be good until the communist Chinese begin to use some of the tech that Honeywell is moving out of the US to Asia for their first weapons R&D programs, if that has not started already. Wednesday, May 5, 2010 Honeywell is actually hiring in the US? Wow, I did not think it did that anymore! In Aerospace the mantra is: If you work in a developed market - you are lucky you have a job. And if you do not like it, then leave! If you work in an emerging market - How fast can we send your site money? And all of you get a promotion! What I do not get is: how the company is so gung-ho and sends all the knowledge out of the US, but then warns you that we have to protect the intellectual property. I see some logic flaws there. Time to get the heck out of Honeywell. Wednesday, May 5, 2010 Honeywell's management doesn't care about all the inefficiencies or whatever shortcomings are highlighted in the blog: "Honeywell’s Leadership perspectives". Honeywellers can rant, whine, or even quit for all they care. Honeywell is "TOO BIG TO FAIL". Wednesday, May 5, 2010 - Call for Referrals to Honeywell Process Solutions:
Refer someone successfully, and earn $$$$! Honeywell Process Solutions (HPS) is a $2.5 billion strategic business unit that improves the productivity and profitability of industrial facilities on every continent around the world. HPS offers a full range of automation and control solutions to key vertical markets, including Energy, Pulp & Paper, and Chemicals/Pharmaceuticals, and develops/markets industrial automation systems and advanced software applications. We are constantly looking for dynamic, highly energized people to join and grow with HPS. We would like to thank you for supporting the referral program! We’re continuing our focus on employee referrals this year to support our high growth targets. We continue to request your support with these efforts and will offer referral bonuses to each employee that recommends an external candidate whom is hired. If you know potential candidates, please refer them through the formal online process as well as to the hiring manager/applicable HR person. Also, please ensure that the candidate indicates your referral when he/she applies for the position. If a position doesn’t have a req number listed, then please contact the hiring manager directly to refer your friend. Turn your connections into Extra Cash! We have positions in the US, Canada, and LAR! Referral bonus amounts can differ by position, region, etc. Please contact the regional HR leader to learn more about the bonus for a particular position. Check out the Corporate Referral Process website for more detail. Tuesday, May 4, 2010 - To the blogger who wrote "Honeywell’s Leadership perspectives": You are brilliant! Now, how do we organize that 'Sick-Out', at the end of the Qtr, so we can start slapping these management idiots in the mouth with the reality that they need us more than we need the multiple layers of them!? Please, if things won’t change for the obvious, let’s give it a nudge in the right direction! Might help....might not... but it will feel good to make them squirm, even if it's just a little bit. Monday, May 3, 2010 Well, here we go again. The rumor has it that we will once again be having a forced shut down this summer. I just wish they would hurry up and tell us. In any case, I'm going to book some vacation during their proposed "Shut Down". At least this will make it seem like a "paid vacation" See, if you do a little bit of planning, Honeywell doesn't seem like such a bad place after all. Monday, May 3, 2010 Diamond Dave hates western employees. First, he imposes endless wasteful procedures. As a result, efficiency and morale plummet. Next, more employees must be sacrificed in order to make the numbers. A self-fulfilling prophecy is created, further justifying his belief that western employees are a problem and that jobs should be offshored as quickly as possible. We have been cynically and ruthlessly forced to become non-competitive; to surrender the excellence that formerly was our trademark. All due to one guy in a position of power, and his warped perception of how things should be. He and executive management make out, while most western employees suffer. What a system! Saturday, May 1, 2010 - Re: April 29, 2010 Honeywell’s Leadership perspectives: Thank you, thank you! You said it all, for all of us. You should look after yourself first(career), then your health and your family, ignore all the BS from diamond Dave & the management team. Thursday, April 29, 2010 - RE:"Honeywell’s Leadership perspectives": Brilliant! Could not have said it better myself! It is time to hit this management where it hurts the most. If everyone called in sick on the last fiscal day of every month the bottom line wouldn't look so good. Time to disrupt the corporation as a whole, and show them (pigs at the trough) where they would be without us (soldiers on the front line). Let's get organized and put this thing to bed! Signed: Tired, demoralized and fed up. Thursday, April 29, 2010 Honeywell’s Leadership perspectives In the middle of the worse economic crisis, we chose to overhaul our business by introducing multiple and complex new tools (that were not market-ready and that can sometimes behave like a virus), and multiple new processes and guidelines (that are incomplete, inaccurate, in draft stages and changing every day), while at the same time, introducing work-sharing, off-shoring, outsourcing etc., in order to save money and time. Furthermore, we chose to do all of this at a time when we are busiest, and budget and schedule constraints are extremely challenging, and the competition is getting stiffer, and the customers are getting meaner While these endeavors may have been very wise and noble causes in almost any other economic time, we chose to do it at this, the worst time. We know that to have introduced any one of these numerous, inhumane changes and morale-killers, would have been very challenging to all involved, but we wanted to maximize the effect to a devastating and unbearable level by doing them all at once. We know that these changes should have been phased in slowly, perhaps one at a time (and some not at all), to be effective, but by doing them all at once we have managed to shoot ourselves in the head over and over again. That is not an easy feat! And all of this should eventually have the opposite effect. But who is looking? We are leaders because we do not know anything else. We have taken away all of the tools that you have spent the last 10 years mastering and are familiar with, and gave you new tools that should take another 10 years to master; but we want you to master them in 10 weeks. We have replaced your familiar design tool with 4 new ones, because the first of the 4 is so error-prone and defective, that you will need the other 3 to mask the defects and weaknesses in the first. We are way too smart to have seen that one coming. The providers of the tools could not have lied to us. Could they? No! We believe that the tool sellers are always right and our employees are always wrong. If the sales people say that their crap can take us to Mars, we can afford to believe them because it is the users that will have to suffer with the crap. And who cares if they drown in it. And who cares about getting back from Mars. The new tools and processes are so amazing that they will fix even the users that are, were, and always will be the cause of human errors (defects). We have taken your one simple process, standards and guidelines that you have spent decades refining, simplifying and perfecting, and shoved it up your rear end, and then shoved 101 new and defective processes, standards and guidelines (that are in draft stages, incomplete, inaccurate and ever-changing) that you won’t even recognize, down your throat (there is no escape!). This should take 10 years to become familiar with, but we want you to do it in 10 weeks. Never mind that they are not ready. We have created numerous "checklists", and checklists to check checklists, and have our checkers checking, checking - you get the idea. We have created this absurd environment that now requires all of these absurdities. We have added so much more to make your work much, more complex, and to multiply your old cycle time and expect you to reduce that cycle time. Are you with us? Why use one simple proven process when you can use 10 new complex ones to do the same thing? We have successfully turned our most experienced, productive and knowledgeable people into bumbling idiots. We intend to fix all of our processes that were and weren’t broken, by breaking them all, or totally destroying them, and add many, many more broken processes in the name of gross stupidity. We don’t believe in making small fixes to broken things, but believe in destroying everything, together with those that were working perfectly, and creating a whole new set of broken untested processes, to be consistent. We want you to produce perfect data/products in record time, using these multiple new imperfect, incomplete and defective new tools, processes and guidelines. We have taken your simplest of tasks and make them more complex, so that all of your years of experience will count for nothing. When we are done with you, you won’t be good at anything, except perhaps suicide. We, the leadership, know better than you, as to how you should do your job and what tools, processes, guidelines are best for you. Forget that we ever asked: "What do you need to do your job more efficiently, cost effectively, and simply?" We didn’t know what we were talking about. Forget that we always said that you have been doing a very good job over the past decades. We didn’t mean that either. Sorry! In other words, we are going to make your work so much more difficult and stressful, and we want you to do it in one quarter of the time and more accurately, while we remove as much incentives and motivation as we can and shatter your morale for good. Our objective is to maximize your stress levels and minimize your morale. You can’t have both now, can you? We have taken the very best and most productive of you, who are very, very good at what you do, and assign you to non-value-added tasks that will leave you perplexed and frustrated to death, not so much from the tasks but from the stupidity, thus reducing/eliminating your enthusiasm and productivity. We strongly believe that the Corporation is making money from the new cumbersome, complex and ridiculous tools, processes, guidelines, checklists, etc. we are creating every day, and not from our electronic hardware designs and other products. That is why we take our best people away from the real and critical work to work on these non-value-added absurdities. If the best of you were already giving the company 150% of your effort, we now expect you to give 250%, and we don’t care that you are now thinking of only giving 50%. Then we can use the “performance” card to “terminate” you. You see? We can’t “lose”. And you can’t win! If you have been a loyal, dedicated and hard working top employee who, over the decades, have given your body, mind and soul to the company, we have now ripped your heart out too! Why won’t you die? We want you to forget everything we ever taught you over the decades (TQ, DFSS Green Belt, Black Belt, Lean Engineering, IPDS 5S etc.) about reducing/eliminating steps in your processes, and reducing/eliminating defects, to be most efficient and cost effective, as we have now multiplied the number of steps in your processes 10-fold, and multiplied the number of opportunities for defects 20-fold, to make sure that we erase from your psyche any such thoughts of efficiency and accuracy, and thus, we can guarantee lower quality, and increased cycle time. Forget that we told you that quality must take precedence over schedule. And we now have lots of inexperienced people around the world, working 24/7, to help us to lower our standards. Look out Toyota, we aim to be number one! We hope that you have not noticed that we want you to transfer your 30 years of experience to our off shore partners in 30 minutes or less, while we are also transferring your benefits and compensations etc. to them as well in that time. We want you to forget what we have always said about taking ownership and pride in your work. With work-sharing, off-shoring and outsourcing etc., you don’t have to give a damn anymore. Isn’t that nice? Just when you thought that the company does not care about you, we take all of the pressures off of you. Now you can screw up and blame others. You can now stab your co-workers in the back or in the face, and they can do the same to you. This, we believe - no, we know - is conducive to a happy and productive work environment. We have to tell you that the company’s products are very competitive, but that we need to be careful so as not to become complacent, lest we become like Toyota, even though everything that we are doing is leading us down that glorious path. That realization will be felt later. But who cares about later. Not us! We are basically, politicians. We know that we won’t be around when the fall-out from all of this hits the fan. We would have been finished raping the company of its reputation and it’s experienced employees, and the remaining employees of everything else, and will have moved on by then. We don’t have to think long term, you see. We have chosen a variety of new vendors and out-sourcing entities, all of whom wants different things, to guarantee that you will never be able to satisfy any one of them. And our increase in defects should improve, i.e., increase the cost and delivery time of everything that we do. Vendors love excuses to delay and increase the cost to us. We are now providing them with plenty, with our new defects-increasing measures. We are standardizing, but yet providing different instructions from each site, to confuse the crap out of our vendors! And work-sharing between sites should confuse everyone else. We are too smart to appreciate that outsourcing technical and complex electronics’ designs is not the same as outsourcing car bumpers and tires. We believe that the outsourcing and off-shore entities are much more capable than the locals. We know this because they have failed so many times before that they will get it right this time. Right? We have excelled in “Negative Productivity” by keeping the people with nothing to do so very busy creating new processes, guidelines, standards, etc., to add much more unnecessary work to the people with lots to do (and who know how to do it) just to make their work much more difficult and stressful. That will suck the life out of them. And we are so damn proud of ourselves. We will keep you happy and motivated by keep reminding you that you still have a job. We know that you are busier than ever, and that we have gone out of our way to make your work and home life as miserable as we can, but that is beside the point. We like to remind you that other companies are laying people off, and hope that you will not notice that those companies are slow-to-dead, while we are busier than ever. We do not want you to notice that we have been quietly and subtly getting rid of people through several ingenious methods, to avoid visibility, and are brain storming new methods every day (we have “ways” and we know your “number”). After all, we are one of the “best” companies in the world. We told ourselves that, and we told Fortune Magazine the same. So how can you dispute that? And that must make our employees feel good too. We had to hide our disappointment when we did not see as many people leaving the company as we had anticipated after we have stabbed you in the back, and the face, thus you have forced us to rethink our strategy and to find alternate methods to screw you more and more, to force you out. Stubborn buggers! At the same time, we had hoped to keep some of our experienced people a little while longer to coordinate and fix and correct the “perfect” work from off shore and outsourcing, but they seem to be leaving. Wonder why that is? We are aiming towards globalization and standardization, even if it means getting there through sub-standardization. At least we will be standardized by being consistently substandard. We believe that we can standardize by adding multiple methods, cultures, levels of experiences, tools, processes etc. - just about everything that should have the opposite effect. We could have simply adopted the decades of best and proven practices from sites and methods within our business, and use them as our baseline for standardization. But that would have been too sensible, too easy and too cheap! We chose to discard the best with the worst and settle for mediocre. We have taken full advantage of the opportunities of the economic crisis and use them to shaft you really well, even though our situation isn’t anywhere nearly as bad as that of others. In case you don’t know, our new goal is to satisfy: Ourselves first, Shareholders second, Customers third (maybe), “Tools Providers fourth (or before customers), and so on and so on, and then employees last, or not anymore! We are sleeping well at nights (and also sleeping for you) as we know that you can’t be sleeping. We are utilizing to the fullest our lack of conscience and morals (never really had any) to reduce your morale. Sounds nice? Forget the saying: It sometimes gets worse before it gets better! And think: It can only get worse, for you that is, and you’ll be fine! We are diligently working to find what other crap we can we pile up on you. And if you do not like it, you can always quit. That is the point. Do you get it? We can’t be “undercover bosses” as we are smart enough to know that the truth will kill us. While we have gone out of our way to make your work-life much more difficult, complex and stressful, we have not neglected to do the same to your personal life, so as to further lower your morale and totally destroy any lingering thoughts of loyalty and dedication you may be harboring:
Wednesday, April 28, 2010 Anybody playing "BS Bingo" while reading Fradin's memo? There oughta be a lot of winners after that "classic" Honeywell announcement. Wednesday, April 28, 2010 So, since Honeywell are doing so well, we all get a pay-rise by the end of Q2 right? Wednesday, April 28, 2010 Wow! Roger Fradin's message is inspiring. I am ready for another furlough or pay reduction, just say the word Rodg! Wednesday, April 28, 2010 - To the blog-poster from Australia: Your HPS division CEO, Norm Gilsdorf, was promoted from UOP (division of Specialty Materials) in 2009. Our loss is your gain - he is a terrific manager. I imagine you will find, like we did at UOP, that there are definite advantages to a big company in terms of resources and financial backing. Unfortunately, what we've also experienced is conversion to a culture where only those at the top are promoted and given pay raises. HON is "churn and burn" all the way. Having an opinion and voicing it gets you ranked a "C" player and fired or forced out. You may have some advantages, in that there are some protections against "constructive dismissal" in Australia, as there are in the UK. But here in the US, it's called "get rid of older and more experienced workers and replace them with younger, preferably offshore, employees". Read any independent assessment written on the pros and cons of Forced Ranking. HON is a textbook case on how to wreck an organization with this outdated and dehumanizing system. The number of articles in the HR journals on Forced Ranking kind of peaked around 2003 because there isn't much more to say about it -- most well-run corporations have figured out that it is no way to treat anyone you even pretend to care about. Either HON never got the message, or they simply like to have a fearful workforce with an average age trending toward the early 30's. Take a look at a presentation from one of the senior HR management at a 2009 conference: http://hrtomorrow.csom.umn.edu/past/2009/present09/Woodward.pdf Page 21: "Top 10 lessons learned" number 7: "People have to leave... Turnover is not only ok but necessary". This is fine coming from a 30-something HR person charged with swinging the ax, but anyone can pretty much see where it leads. It would be far more honest to simply fire everyone and only hire people under short term contracts. Wednesday, April 28, 2010 Message from Roger Fradin, April 27, 2010
Sales were $3.1 billion, up 4 percent from the first quarter of 2009. The majority of our Products businesses are starting to grow again for the first time in a year while our Solutions businesses showed significant strength in orders and backlog. However, our regional ACS performance was mixed. Asia Pacific delivered double-digit sales growth, the Americas was flat and Europe Middle East and Africa (EMEA) experienced sales decline. We are positioned to see sales improve as the economy recovers, but must still challenge ourselves to find ways to generate more revenue. Operating Income was up 24 percent from the first quarter of 2009. This solid performance continues to be driven by controlling our costs and ensuring our pricing strategy reflects the overall value we provide our customers. In addition, our restructuring actions had a positive impact on our first quarter margin rate and operating income results. We expect further market recovery and now must prepare for increased customer demand by optimizing our supply chain. Cash Flow was up 82 percent year over year due primarily to good working capital performance and capital expenditure management. These are outstanding results and builds on our strong cash performance in recent years. ACS generated $24 million in Indirect Spend savings in the first quarter. Unfortunately, we did not have any indirect spend savings in March, which is a trend that we need to quickly address. We must be vigilant in managing our costs even if our outlook appears to be on the rebound. The largest area for reduction continues to be travel, so please continue to evaluate if travel is needed, particularly when it comes to internal meetings. View our financial results and key highlights from across the ACS portfolio. ACS is a major contributor to Honeywell’s success and will continue to outperform our competitors if we focus on the global trends across our industries and our key initiatives: Favorable Trends: Key Initiatives: Focus in these areas will allow us to continue to expand our market positions in the industries we serve and outperform our competitors. Our strong customer focus, cost management and investment in innovation and process improvements continue to fuel our growth. I’m confident in the future of ACS and Honeywell and look forward to seeing even stronger results as economic conditions stabilize and eventually improve. Thank you for your dedication, contributions, and focus on delivering for our customers, the corporation and shareowners.
President and CEO Honeywell Automation and Control Solutions Tuesday, April 27, 2010 Obama and Cote - now there's a team. As if Obama needs any more help bringing this country to it's knees. Here in our plant, we have all kinds of issues going on in H.R. Women do not get paid what men do, and now that Wall Mart employees have won their law suit, isn't it time Honeywell pays up too? After all... we were told our time-cards were getting changed a while back because Wall Mart employees had a law suit going and Honeywell didn't want that to happen to them! It seems there were problems with equal pay for equal work and if you work it right and "tell Daddy everything" you can be brought right up to the top of the food chain while everyone else has to earn their way up over many years. And how dare you bring this nasty little issue out in the open. We have people quitting daily because this place stinks so bad. It's down the road for me real soon. This place needs a few good lawyers! Friday, April 23, 2010 The recent posts are evidence of a few things that we already know:
Thursday, April 22, 2010
The famed Honeywell Operating System (HOS), which draws from various world famous operating systems including the Toyota Production System, was launched at JKM Automotive on 27th March 2009. The HOS will introduce world-class best practices into the Dynamatic® Group. JKM Auto™ is the only Honeywell Supplier in India, and, the third worldwide, to launch the HOS. Thursday, April 22, 2010 According to the website article posted on BusinessWeek:
Thursday, April 22, 2010 I have over seven spreadsheets to fill in everyday, alongside doing my work! Just so my manager gets a green tick. Oh, by the way, people won't even bother the H&S people for a plaster because it shows up Red on the Health and Saftey chart.... Something is very very wrong with this company.
Regards Thursday, April 22, 2010 Yeovil UK is still waiting for payrises. HPD's they stated Wage Reviews in Q2... Okay, guess they mean the end of Q2! Thursday, April 22, 2010 - To the poster on March 28,2010 who wrote: "Quit grinding your axes and take control of your career.": I guess you're either a manager or some sub-level management idiot who call themselves things like 'Operations Execellance', THAT or you're some spotty young prig who's only just joined. In any case, you need to WAKE UP and learn that some people actually want the company to survive. Unfortunately its people like you who are bringing this company to its knees. Trust me mate, Cote won't save you when the shit hits the fan in your department, neither will your boss. Thursday, April 22, 2010 So because of the 'downturn' our company can no longer afford to replace anyone they lose. Instead, in some cases, pulling people from other departments to fill the gap. It can't afford to allow people to travel outside the 50 mile radius to talk to Vendors or Customers. Were not able to get anymore Temporary workers because there is no money in the pot. Most people gave up unpaid holiday last year in able to help them out so I ask myself the question: If a company can't fund or support the workers they have how can they advertise jobs in emerging market regions to do the jobs we do? And WHY? What's the hidden agenda? Has anyone else seen this happen in the UK within their department? Wednesday, April 21, 2010 - To the April 20 poster who asked, "Does HOS exist?" No. What exists within Honeywell is CYA. It's what happens in a culture of fear is combined with unrealistic expectations; responsibility but no authority. Brought to you courtesy of Diamond Dave Cote. Wednesday, April 21, 2010 I stumbled across this blog while googling and have to admit to being shocked at the strength of feeling in evidence. I joined Honeywell Process Solutions in Australia from a competitor organization a while ago and it has been like a breath of fresh air. I attended a kick-off meeting earler this year and the quailty of people and their energy was infectious. There are issues around no salary increases though and people are hoping local management can get that sorted out. I hope whatever has gone wrong in Aero doesnt happen here. Tuesday, April 20, 2010 Can you work for a company if you don't trust it or believe in it? How do you meet your HPD quarterly tasks if you have little or no faith in your manager? What does Honeywell stand for except spreadsheets and VOTTR targets? I've worked for Honeywell for a few years now and I have never experienced such a terribly unorganised, yet self-praising bunch of middle management prigs. Here is Honeywell's manifesto summed up in two sentances: "More for less" and "If you can't really meet the targets, fudge the figures". Now don't get me wrong; there is nothing illegal about what they do. You see, in the UK the Americans are deemed to be the big brother of the aerospace world. If the Americans say jump, we jump. So every week, the USA monitors our arrears and delivery targets through SAP and gets us to report back. If its green you're okay; but of its red, your manager is told to pull their finger out. So what do we do? Our manager doesn't like what he sees, an excel sheet is printed and we Honeywell mineons move the dates to get us back into the green area = Americans Happy. So after all of this fudging.... oops, should i say 'arrears management', work on a weekly basis I ask myself one simple question? Does HOS exist? Monday, April 19, 2010 My advice to you is if you like doing nothing, apply for a job at Aerospace headquarters in Phoenix. Ask to do a job related to HOS or Operations Excellence. They are still hiring, but it might be hard if you have not already failed in your current job role, that seems to be a pre-requisite for the higher paying jobs out there at least. Monday, April 19, 2010 According to Vault.com, a corp. survey website that has "tagged" our beloved HI perfectly, lay-offs are generally performed every fall. This is looked at as a standard cost cutting measure at the end of every year. In this article everything that Vault had described about this companies directive, which was written by an director level manager in 2003, has been very accurate. Not much has changed and don't think it will until it's too late and the Executive(Rats) jump from the sinking ship! Monday, April 19, 2010 Has anyone any info to share on when we can expect the next layoff in Areospace? We have orders, but cannot get parts from the suppliers. Lots of people walking around with nothing to do. Why not lay off some people? I would be one of those that want out. This is the worst coompany anyone can work for. The people that are running things do not have a clue. We are all on a sinking ship. Thursday, April 15, 2010
For your info, Honeywell's CFO has been named as one of the Best CFO by Institutional Investors magazine. Check out Wednesday, April 14, 2010 - from Honeywell, Aerospace, Canada: I'm out, I'm out, I'm out! What a relief, to be free of that place. All of the stories in this blog are true. Take note investors who come by this web page - invest in the competition. Honeywell is about to tank after their "short term gains" are exhausted. To all those hanging on until retirement, I wish you the very best of luck. To the rest of you - now is the time, read the writing on the wall. Good luck. Tuesday, April 13, 2010 No, HR does not treat their own HR managers any better. I am in HR and I recently left Honeywell Aerospace. If you want some insight on how we are treated, look at the turnover rate among HR managers and directors and I think it tells the whole story. An HR manager can contribute nothing in a company that does not value people or long term relationships with employees. It made me absolutely sick and it is wonderful to be free. Sunday, April 11, 2010 - To the March 29 poster on "Lay-off List" - If you are in the "Outer L" of the 9 block ratings, you can be sure you will be let go if a layoff is announced. I am an Aero manager, so I have some insight on this. HR is doing everything in their power this year to make us fire people in the outer L 2 years in a row. If you have had a "Personal Improvement Plan" letter recently from you manager, then I would say your time is up. I hate my job as a manager because of BS like this. HR MAKES US put 10% of the people in the outer L, and now they tell us we have to fire them. I'll bet my paycheck HR doesn't treat their staff this way. Sunday, April 11, 2010 I have worked for Honeywell in the UK for 30 years. Morale is the worst I have ever known it. No pay increase this year and engineers are leaving to find employment elsewhere. I have joined Unite the Union as I don't trust anyone in management or HR. I just hope I can hang on to Retirement! Friday, April 9, 2010 Honeywell has changed it's offer to the salaried employees at Dynamic to match those of the union employees. Happier faces today! Thursday, April 8, 2010 Yes you are right about the Honeywell access line. I was a manager at an Aerospace site and was told by HR who the "suspected" caller was on both occasions where it happened to one of my front line supervisors. HR cannot be trusted to do anything but lie to your face. Be careful. Thursday, April 8, 2010 The union employees at Dynamic are to get two weeks severance for each year worked without cap. Pensions are recognized, six months of benefits after termination. Truly precedent setting. Staff employees are to get one week severance if employment exceeds five years capped at 26 years. Pensions recognized, six months of benefits to follow. Many sad faces around here... Wednesday, April 7, 2010 I suppose the below blog from the Honeywell Middle East employee is a HBS employee. The characteristics of the Human Remains Manager (I liked the terminology) sound like HBS HR Dept. Wednesday, April 7, 2010 Under no circumstances ever call the Honeywell phone line on Ethics Violations or Harassment. My experience has been horrendous trying to get a manager to treat me like a human being. Has anyone ever seen a TV commercial where a lawyer warns people not to talk to an insurance adjuster explaining that they are looking out for the company’s best interest and not yours? That is exactly what you get if you make a complaint - a “claims adjuster” distorting anything said and never following up to verify if you were harassed. Making a claim will only get you a bad PR because you are not a “team player”, “does not support management”, and not good at “communication”. Do not try to change this organization from within because it is corrupt. Spend your energy finding a job with a company that values it’s employees. Wednesday, April 7, 2010 In regard to Cote's 57% pay cut: Sure his 2008 total comp was listed at 30MM and his 2009 comp at 13MM, BUT if you look closely, he received a 14MM bonus in 2008 that will actually be paid in equal installments in 2009 and 2010. That means the true value for 2008 was 16MM for 2008 and 20MM for 2009 (with 7MM held back for 2010). That looks like a 25% increase from where I'm sitting. Tuesday, April 6, 2010 Can some one check the Honeywell Affiliate in Middle East. Every day, it is going horrible. Please, every one is crying. Monday, April 5, 2010 Check the stock blogs. People are selling their Honeywell stock in droves because of Cote's emphasis on China over the US. Maybe the tide is turning. Monday, April 5, 2010 - To the March 29th poster: How do you know you are "on the layoff list"? And furthermore, how can I get on that list? It would be such a relief to be free of this place, it would be worth the stress of having to find a new job. Wednesday, March 31, 2010 Diamond Dave is really on a roll, and is a financial wizard. By closing down U.S. and European factories and moving them to China, India and Malaysia, cutting highly-paid U.S. employees and instead hired cheap Asian workers, and even set-up an R&D in India, Honeywell stock price hit a 52-week high as of March 31. Dave Cote doesn't care if the products are sloppy. He got all his numbers right at the bottom line. Wednesday, March 31, 2010 This is the first time I've seen this blog and I find it very interesting - considering how similar everyone's experiences are to my own. I was with S&C and was laid-off about a year ago; one of the happiest days of my life. The HR person didn't know what to do, based on the way I was responding and how visibly relieved I appeared. Like some, I was also a member of management, but that really was not much more than a paper title. Our hands were tied to the extent that nothing positive could ever be done because of the behaviors instilled by a completely incompetent "leadership" team out of Golden Valley. I use the word leadership very lightly in relation to this group. One thing I find a little surprising is - I always thought S&C was simply the worst group possible, and somewhat an exception. I still think it is the worst, probably because of my experience. But to hear the same concerns from so many other groups helps me understand how deeply seeded the problems are. It's not even complaining' it's simple descriptions of bad behaviors and actions that crippled S&C and it appears will cripple Honeywell in total. To all of those that remain, best of luck, as I know personally the hell you live in every day. For those like me, celebrate the separation and learn to recognize the signs wherever you land (or are) to minimize exposure to this type of thing again. That is without question the only real thing I ever learned during 8-years at HON. Wednesday, March 31, 2010 I am glad that I will be leaving Honeywell next week for better prospects elsewhere. In the Middle East Honeywell is delaying payments even to employee expenses. HR Department: We are blessed with a Human Remains Manager who does not even reply his calls/mails, leave alone address employee concerns.HR had conducted a survey and conveyed that the results will be broadcast. Never heard anything after the survey closed since maximum concerns were with HR. Monday, March 29, 2010 Another casualty report. Honeywell's oldest factory outside of the United States is slated to shut it's doors. Honeywell Canada has been told it's Dynamic factory will have the doors shut by the end of 2011 at the latest. The workforce was pared down from approx. 900 people 10 years ago to less than 200 now. All engineering and design support was removed from the facility last year and shopped to Minneapolis. The "Men in Black" have stated they have no compassion for the 30 and 40 year employee's and that they were lucky to have their jobs for that long. Severance is an unknown entity at this point in time. Monday, March 29, 2010 Does anyone know when we can expect another layoff in Areospace? I am hoping it will be soon....and I am lucky enough to be on the layoff list. I do not want to work for this company anymore and am trying to find another job. Such a sad place to work. Sunday, March 28, 2010 Quit grinding your axes and take control of your career. If Honeywell is so awful, quit playing the victim and get on with your life. This is enertaining reading.....I must admit. Saturday, March 27, 2010 Honeywell Aerospace is in a death spiral, and apparently leadership has no desire to stop it. They have given a large percentage of our business to the competition, have very little new avionics product introduction, and have trashed the service side of the business. Funding for quality improvement is now limited to flight safety issues only for the most part. It really looks to me like they are getting ready to spin off the avionics part of the business, but I am afraid that by the time Diamond Dave is done moving everything overseas - which is ruining our quality, reputation, and ability to develop new product- there will be nothing left to sell. Over the last 20 years, I have watched companies such as Garmin, Thales, Collins, L3, Universal, and many others take more and more of our customers away from us. Honeywell's limited efforts to compete are often too late, and too weak, because the company is being ran by finance rather than those who know the business and how to stay on top. Friday, March 26, 2010 - Re: Stock price at a 52 week high. What Dave Cote is doing is trading the long term health and vitality of the company for short term gains on Wall Street. It will not be sustainable. He is exchanging the talent, resources, and knowledge built up over decades for cheap Chinese labor. The momentum of the company will allow this temporarily, but eventually it will grind to a halt. The know-how will be gone, and no one will be left to help keep China afloat. Quality will suffer (it already is), customers will go elsewhere (they already are), remaining employees will leave (as they have begun to do already), suppliers will adapt to Honeywell T&C's by requiring COD (they have started.) Dave's house of cards is teetering, and eventually the financial whiz-kids will run out of spin. Best to not be holding shares of Hon when that happens. I listened to Dave's lies 8 or 9 years ago w/respect to stock price and paid the price. Now I'm ditching Hon as quickly as possible before it crashes. Thursday, March 25, 2010 Honeywell's stock price is at 52-weeks high. Diamond Dave must be doing something right by transferring factories and job off-shore. Or is this just an illusion? Another Enron in the making? Wednesday, March 24, 2010 - Response to a previous blog: Honeywell is run by the people in Finance. They dictate everything. There is not one person in upper management that has an engineering background. The site leaders and senior management who have engineering degrees have forgotten the Code of Ethics (see Order of the Engineer, IEEE's Code of Conduct, or Engineer's Code of Ethics/Conduct from any engineering society). In fact, when you are finally approved for a capital purchase, you will be charged 5% interest by corporate for the purchase. Then corporate can say they made a 5% profit or use it to play their "financial engineering" games. Talk about robbing one's self. The reports of HON profit to Wall Street are based on one HON division selling to another and making a "profit". All these paper profits and financial reporting games will catch up with them. Monday, March 22, 2010 Is Honeywell run by accountants/analysts or by engineers these days? Don't get me wrong as I'm not debasing them. I'm a Honeyweller and everyday I have to attend to customers' complaints on products, software that doesn't work. I have to explain to the customers that they have to pay extra or buy new ones to replace factory-defect equipment/devices. Defective products have been coming out everyday. Bad software that can shutdown a whole factory has no solution. Isn't this crazy? No wonder customers have been labelling Honeywell with a big "M" as in "Moneywell". Monday, March 22, 2010 When you think you have heard everything, something just pops up and smacks you in the head where you say you got to be kidding me. No, really! Here is the story: Mary has worked for Honeywell for 30 plus years and something happens where she is terminated. Here’s the catch: she was given a severance package, was told that they would not fight unemployment and that she had to sign a document disclosing why she was fired from Honeywell to her next employer. Really! Oh yea, the reason is so ridiculous and fabricated I can't even explain it. WOW! I am sure we will be reading about this in the months to come? Sunday, March 21, 2010 I have been a Weller for over 20 years. I used to be proud of what we produced. Sorry to say that ever since the merger, its been like watching a train-wreck in slow motion. Extraordinary rendition for Diamond Dave would be poetic justice for the substandard crap we are supplying our Troops. Sunday, March 21, 2010 I agree about the nepotism at Aerospace. For one example, in approx 2003, we decided to do quite a bit of dipping into one Director's background because the business decisions were really out of whack and excessively supporting the VP. After some investigative work, it turned out that the VP and Director were quite the set of buddies - including doing each other renovations on weekends. Just one small example. Both are now gone. Sunday, March 21, 2010 Hey, lets see the Aerospace leadership team lead by example. Let THEM make non essential cuts in their staff or forego any of their bonuses and perks. Do you think that would ever happen? Everyone knows there is no performance management out there - either you are entitled to the benefits of the "Phoenix jobs bank" or you are not- and entitlement is gained with seniority or simply having worked out there and failed in some sourcing or operations job and moved to a staff position. What a waste of money! I would not even pay someone a dollar a day to call other people and ask for "updates" all day long and host conference calls. But you can do that at Aerospace HQ and earn six figures if you made the right friends along the way. Intermarriage really does thin the gene pool; our Aerospace leadership team is living proof, and the continued decline of the quality of the decisions they make shows that they do nothing but seek each other's approval and reaffirm each other's words. To hell with the people in the field working for the customers. What a sad joke that is. Sunday, March 21, 2010 Most of the comments here were 0% pay, furloughs, etc. Honeywellers, eat your hearts out. You are on top of the food chain if you work for the Head Office just like two guys from Global Security, who are travelling in style around Asia in the name of "investigation". They travel from one country to another and staying just only for one day in each country. How on earth can you do an investigation by staying for a few hours in each Honeywell office? The main reason: One of them mentioned that he is collecting air mileage so that his family can travel for free! Sorry, Honeywellers, we are at the bottom of the food chain! Friday, March 19, 2010 - HW Aerospace, Canada: Same story here. Our pay raise was left "to be determined" but officialy 0%. I feal sorry for the local management team. They have no power anymore, and thus no ability to retain staff. Too bad because some of the best talent that has been developed over many many years are leaving in droves. Furthermore, they are not allowed to hire external talent (hiring freeze North America wide) and must depend on their globalized staff to fill in the blanks. Yet the engineers KNOW that the quality of work coming out of the offshore locations is below minimum acceptable standard (usually they just ship us a bag of parts that does not work). It will take YEARS to develope the skill set to equal the least of the staff that recently quit (to find higher paying jobs). What will the management staff do in the mean time? I do not know. Tough times for us here at Honeywell I think. Staff are so over worked due to very very lean operations. Something has to be done soon, or the breaking point will be upon us. Or maybe it is already here... Friday, March 19, 2010 - Addendum to what I wrote in March 18: Tianjin ACS factory did not experience any furloughs or lay-offs in 2009 while other Honeywell sites are suffering. In fact, Tianjin factory is quiet 5 days per month and two weeks per month for Q2 and Q3 2009. But still employees report to the factory while picking their nose in their workplace. Management told us that China is an emerging market and China will save the day for Honeywell. (Say what??) Management told us that once the company offended the Chinese authorities by instituting lay-offs, Honeywell may be booted out of the country. While the rest of Honeywell is suffering especially North America and Europe, happy days are still here in China. Friday, March 19, 2010 Hey, people. Diamond Dave don't give a hoot about your comments. Just look at the recent stock price jumps. It's increased his and his cronies value substantually. Unless you have the capacity to influence the stock price, you have no value to Diamond Dave eat - you're just anoying - not even. Watch the insider trading and see who sells off Honeywell stock. Let's face it. North America is DEAD for job growth from Honeywell. Everyone should take lessons in Mandarin and Hindi. Force your kids, at threat of death, to learn these languages if you have any brains and sense of survival. Forget engineering or other manufacturing based skills. They are useless. If you have full command of these two languages and English - your kids will rule the world! Let's face it. With the huge USA debt load, there will be no future in the USA for the next generation. Friday, March 19, 2010 The blunt truth is, during his tenure Diamond Dave Cote has brought nothing original - absolutely nothing - to Honeywell culture. Everything he does is copied and ripped off from other corporations. He has no creativeness, no originality, no imagination, no people skills, no technical knowledge. Due only to his position he has instilled an atmosphere of fear which has enabled him to initiate and perpetuate his rape of Honeywell's vitality, up to and including its most valuable assets, its employees. This fear extends all the way from Dave's immediate worshippers to sniveling, weak-minded self-important first-line managers who enjoy strutting like peacocks while mouthing the company line, but who, when faced with common-sense questions from workers, wet their pants and turn mean. Diamond Dave has repeatedly stolen from the employees and bled the enthusiasm, the energy, the vitality, the experience, the skills, the knowledge, the loyalty, the can-do spirit; in sum, the "quality", from a once-proud company. All this for paying a few pieces of silver to Wall Street and pocketing his bonus check. In exchange he has left disorganization, confusion, frustration, distrust, scorn, fear, low morale, dissatisfied customers, damaged careers, damaged communities, a damaged country, and a damaged corporate reputation. Again, all to pay a few pieces of silver to Wall Street and line his pockets. Well, Dave, aren't you quite the guy? It took a really exceptional "leader" to pull this off. Now please leave Honeywell TF alone. Please. Whether Honeywell can ever return to being the company it once was remains to be seen. Considering that the talent that has been laid off or quit, rebuilding the skill-sets, knowledge, and talent will take many years. Rebuilding the enthusiasm and trust will take much longer. Friday, March 19, 2010
Layoffs are bad for businessExtract from latest JimPinto.com eNews, referencing this Honeywell weblog.At Honeywell, pay-freezes are the rule, and employees are slaves to spread-sheets while jobs are steadily outsourced to India and China. Meanwhile, CEO Dave Cote was on the list of top-paid CEOs in 2008. In 2009, Cote's incentive plan was suspended, and bonuses for top executives were canceled. But still, poor "Diamond Dave" (as Honeywellers call him) pulled in only $13.2M, compared with $30.8M in 2008.
Thursday, March 18, 2010 There are no lay-offs at Tianjin-China ACS factory. No furloughs since 2009, even though those guys are not doing anything and the factory is quiet. Thursday, March 18, 2010 I work at a site that services 2 major airlines. We have furloughs and shut downs to support internal goals that just have nothing to do with making a profit or serving customers. Then we all earn OT the next week. This is crazy and makes no sense. The least informed employee among us can sit down and see the foolishness of spending $3 to save $1. But I guess since we have CSR's now that do not speak English, the customers have nobody to complain to. The pay cuts for our managers were a joke. Cut their pay 10% and watch their work performance decrease 50%, and who can blame them? I guess it will never matter to someone who does not work at a plant; but for us to see it, it is very sad. The emails and slide presentations and townhalls are all a bunch of BS. Nobody believes anyone in Phoenix is anything but a liar working to keep his or her own staff job safe. Nobody makes a decision, nobody tells us the truth, nobody makes any sense anymore. It is a shame. All we needed was a strong leader, one who could communicate a vision to us and motivate us to work hard for a purpose (and no the value of our executive team's stock options does not count). All we have are liars and thieves who communicate with spreadsheets. They wont even let us make survey comments about the decision makers, I guess it is better to talk to other Phoenix people at HQ than the guys out here with the dirty fingernails doing the work. You people in Phoenix at Aerospace HQ should be ashamed of yourselves. Cowards, all of you! Thursday, March 18, 2010 I work in the UK and we all feel your pain. We've heard (even though we shouldn't have) that we are to have a pay freeze for the next three years. We were a small, dynamic company in the lighting control industry. We were in the right market at the right time and business was (still is) booming. We were acquired by Honeywell about 2 years ago and now, morale is at an all time low. We can no longer react quickly to new customer requirements, we now have what is laughingly called Velocity Product Development. It is a collection of spreadsheets, PowerPoints, systems, processes and meetings specifically designed to hamper any attempts to launch a new product quickly. Still, unless we all move to India, we probably won't have to worry about it for much longer. Our parting gift will be a new acronym for their collection, ESAD. Eat Sh1t And Die. Thursday, March 18, 2010 I'm gone from Honeywell. Recently I went to a Town Hall meeting at my new organization. Wow! What a world of difference when compared to Honeywell's in the presentation, tone, attitude, forecasts, investment philosophy and approach. I couldn't believe it! Funny how it goes. What goes around, comes around. Honeywell closed my career along with many many others. But I ended up in a position where I definitely influence whether Honeywell gets our contract. Guess who will never never get the contract? This is the ultimate in justice and stiffing the Leadership Team (whether they are still there or not) that un-necessarily putting all those good people out of work - we're not talking unprofitability, but just squeezing out a few more gross margin points by outsourcing to Asia. I know because I have all the financial statements. Another item. When I joined my new org, others came to me and told me of their impressions, as they hear it on the street, about what is happening at Honeywell. Let me tell you that at the street level, the impressions were so bad, that even I, an axed and piss-off Honeywell employee, ended up giving some defense - but not much. But they had their facts right on - especially with their wives, brothers, sisters and cousins, fathers, mothers, etc... working at Honeywell. Honeywell is a destroyer of communities in North America - and communities will remember for a long long time. This is irrespective of the public hype. Those of you that are still at Honeywell can dismiss this as a single disgruntled voice. No doubt, one voice will not make a difference in your life or in Honeywell's profit. You will still get up at 5:00 AM, kiss your wife goodbye, get in your car with ultimate enthusiasm and cry at the top of your voive: "What can I do for Honeywell today?" Good for you. But be aware that Honeywell has stabbed so many people in the back - that they are all working against you. So remember your 10% pay cuts, hating to drive into work and Diamond Dave pep talks - you're lucky to have a job! I wish you luck and I commend your loyalty. Thursday, March 18, 2010 Why does it seem that the majority are surprised by "any" of these actions by Corporate management? This is Allied Signal, and this is what they do: Take a strong company, and bleed it until it's so inefficient that it's good-name is ruined across all markets. But, the stockholders and executives continue to reap the bounty of modern-day corporate piracy. So, if you're vested like many of us, you deal with the BS and watch it all go down! Thursday, March 18, 2010 I left Honeywell Aerospace in May 2009 after three bittersweet years and went to another major defense company. I can say that the grass is greener outside HON, contrary to upper management's thinking. I do miss my amazing and talented ex-colleagues, but I have not had to attend any meeting at the new company. No management muddling at my new employer, I can get parts, no one in corporate in Phoenix makes decisions on capital purchases (decision is made locally), health benefits are better (same plan and provider as at HON), need I go on? The straw that broke my back at HON was my manager telling me that my 1.4% promotion raise was justified as gas prices had come down to $2 a gallon. WTF? I was treated as another plug-and-play engineer, another EID, another metric, another statistic in the HON mantra of Sick-Stigma. I am one of the rare younger engineers in my niche field. But I was just another EID. Not anymore! Wednesday, March 17, 2010 I heard that the engineers in the Czech Republic got "nice raises". But of course, there's nothing available for North America. Wednesday, March 17, 2010 Torrance Aerospace site - no raises, but boy are we lucky to be here. Honeywell is a (third) world class employer, we are all grateful and will accept the next furlough order that comes from King Dave, knowing that he courageously shares in our sacrifice, just like our former illustrious leader Rob Gillette did. It just brings tears to my eyes. Or is that the nausea coming up from my stomach? Wednesday, March 17, 2010 No payraises at Specialty Materials. Tuesday, March 16, 2010 Phoenix facilities - no raises. Possible furlough(s) to be announced tomorrow (3/17/10). Tuesday, March 16, 2010 No pay raises at Allentown (Aerospace). No surprises, either. Tuesday, March 16, 2010 No pay raises in Aero, but we did add a few new directors, VP's, and Ops Excellence power point jockeys at Phoenix HQ. I hear there may be a furlough if they need new carpet or office furniture in the executive suite, also. Tuesday, March 16, 2010 No Pay increase at AERO Toronto, ON. Possible two more furloughs. Tuesday, March 16, 2010 No Pay increase at AERO Albuquerque, NM. Monday, March 15, 2010 ACS is waiting until the end of the second quarter. Monday, March 15, 2010 UOP will not give a raise. It will be "looked at" again in June. Monday, March 15, 2010 No pay increase at Aero Plymouth, MN. Furlough first week of 2010, possible furlough in July. Monday, March 15, 2010 - Attn: All Honeywell's followers: We are curious to know how many employees, or divisions, got a raise this year. We at Sensing and Controls got 0.00 $, plus the 10% cut last year. Has anyone heard if the cut may apply this year again? Remember, you must act like you like your job... Sunday, March 14, 2010 Let's see, a salary of over $13 million for a man who only knows 3 words: "Offshore", "India", and "China." He's still overpaid. Friday, March 12, 2010 I wonder when they decided to drop their bonus? If they decided late in the year then that would explain why they never publicised it. Friday, March 12, 2010 Apparently Dave Cote did the right thing last year, as mind-boggling as that is. I can't understand why they wouldn't have publicized this more.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010 When Diamond Dave Cote goes to India he receives the red carpet treatment. Literally. He and his limosine entourage get a traffic-stopping police escort from the airport through town, just like a visiting head-of-state. Once they reach the "campus" he is greeted by specially installed red carpet. India figures nothing they do will be too excessive for DD. And why not? Over the years he has stubbornly held to his belief that India (or China) will be The Solution that will make him a genuine Honeywell Hero, despite mountains of evidence that indicate otherwise. So despite lackluster mediocre performance, he continues to reward India by handing over thousands of US jobs. Face it, in his version of Honeywell the only job that matters is his, and he has surrounded himself with sycophants who refuse to tell him otherwise. Tuesday, March 9, 2010 - A new UOP poster here. While in the process of shipping as many engineering positions as possible from Illinois to New Delhi, we were given an unexpected accounting reprieve from the outsourcing executioner. At the start of 2009, the internal cost of a Delhi engineer was changed from a ridiculous 30$/hour in 2008 to a more realistic 70$/hour for 2009. The folks here were very optimistic that we could compete at this "price", since we were only about 40$ more an hour. This says a lot about the efficiency of our well trained (millions of dollars spent) eastern counterparts. If it would have stayed that way, we could have shut them down. When the final accounting was done for 2009, it seems the current cost structure didn't exactly make the New Delhi office seem like such a good idea. Diamond Dave said it was a good idea, so it has to be, right? God forbid someone grow a pair and tell him otherwise. So the internal cost of the Delhi engineers, who for the most part can't tell their backside orifice from a spiral wound gasket, has been cut in half for 2010. And the poor schmuck that priced them at their real cost for 2009 is probably unemployed right now. You want to know what the sad part is? At over 100$ an hour internally billed, we could still compete with these guys priced at 35$ an hour. We really can. But we will not be allowed to in the interest of DD mandated globalization - we will be redcued in number until we are ineffective as a whole. Our efficiency has increased dramatically because of reduced headcount with the same or more work to be done. We stupidly sacrifice to get it done because that is the way UOP taught us to work. It is part of our culture that Diamond Dave seems hell bent on destroying. Tuesday, March 9, 2010
and they are lucky to have me! I am a smart, driven, unique, and useful software engineer, and they are lucky to have me!
Monday, March 8, 2010 Sad but true. In my position, I attend/participate in a quite a number of Aero leadership meetings. I've heard it over and over... we must do what we can to move the jobs overseas - that is the first desirable option. But then the next topic is usually around "we have a lot of thin spots in our skill sets. How can we recover these people?" Without strong ethical leadership at the top, this rudderless ship is doomed to circle the toilet bowl... Sunday, March 7, 2010 Source: Seth Godin's Blog:
Sunday, March 7, 2010 I am sure that someone in Honyewell senior management (or one of their minions) reads this blog and probably thinks it is simply some kind of peanut gallery throwing garbage at our illustrious, award-winning leader. In my opinion, some of the most articulate and HONEST people around are contributing and I say: "thank you". Folks, Mr. Cote is the anti-Midas. As far as we're concerned at UOP, he has taken a nearly 100 year old company, installed his apparatus and pretty much turned it into an ATM machine, which is rapidly running out. This is just a continuation of what has been happening under Allied Signal since the 1980's but now the machine is starting to be unreliable and it's time to get out the blowtorch. I have never seen such a "political entrepeneur" in action before, it is truly a sight to behold. I have met the kinds of investment "analysts" who run around attending roundtables, roadshows, conference calls and the rest of the crap that Wall Street likes to parrot back to investors in Morningstar, Forbes and so forth. Forbes used to be a somewhat believable magazine but is pretty much a tool for the "we love us" crowd. They must be either stupid or short sellers. Whoever runs any company in such an unethical way has no business advising the President of the US. That being said, the president himself likely is doing this for show anyway. I hope Mr. Cote enjoys a good discussion with his other advisory board member, Andy Stern (Service Employees International Union President) Mr. Stern can work out a deal to get those American scientists and engineers good janitorial jobs. Friday, March 5, 2010 It's not just Aerospace, either. Every aspect of Honeywell that Diamond Dave touches has been turned to crap, although he is revered in India and China. Guessing that love affair will end as soon as they begin to realize how merciless he is. Thursday, March 4, 2010 I always think that Honeywell Process Solutions (HPS) is the worst, and Aerospace is always 90% better than us. Makes me feel a little bit better now, because I got laid off last year. Thursday, March 4, 2010 Like many others on this blog, I too just recently left Honeywell Aerospace for other opportunities. In the last all-hands meeting from the President of Aerospace, Tim said that upper leadership will not be taking bonuses this year. Why do I get the feeling that upper management's ideas of no-bonus will not match the no-bonuses at lower levels? Time will tell and soon. Last year the rank and file took a 10% pay cut for half the year, and when they gave that back, they furlowed the entire Aerospace company for the first full week of 2010. Cuts at Corporate, nope! The primary goal is to offshore as much as possible at all costs. The idea that Dave Cote would be on any advisory board for the US Government is very SCARY, unless he is going to offshore the Senate and Congress? It would be a good idea for someone to question the number of jobs he has created in the US in the last 5 years, verses the number that he has sent to other countries. After that question is answered honestly, the entire truth would be on the table. Of course at that level of management and politics, the truth is different than the working class version of truth. Thursday, March 4, 2010 I don't do a lot of blogging, but reading through this collection of comments, this may be the most negative employee forum that exists on the Internet. The thing is, I think almost everything I have read is true and I agree 100%. I left Honeywell last year and actually began working somewhere that I could contribute and have a career (with things like pay raises and promotions, which by the way are still regarded as important employee incentives at good companies). I think everyone should get out there and look. The good employees don't have to put up with the kind of garbage doled out in Aerospace and served up as leadership and strategy. Thursday, March 4, 2010 I think that it is totally fair that we are able to slam Gillette, Speranzo and Vidano on this website. These guys have had a negative impact on tens of thousands of people (including families). In the pre-Internet days, these guys would operate in secrecy and no one would really know what went on. Today and here, their actions and behaviors can be evaluated and judged by all. It's a 360° review that we were forced to do at the site level, but were directed not to evaluate senior leadership. Funny how rules are only for certain people! Wednesday, March 3, 2010 - To the post complaining on Mar. 1 about Aero HR: It's not HR. They are simply doing what they are told. HR doesn't dictate policy. I wouldn't blame the Aero HR VP, but the Aero SBG President. I'm so glad I am out of a place where employees are considered the biggest liability that must be disposed of at all costs! The rest of you should leave the first chance you get. It will be the best move of your life. Wednesday, March 3, 2010 - To the Tuesday, March 2, 2010 posting on Unions: I agree with you in that Unions are a force that HR really listens to. I can tell you that the unofficial policy at our site is not to do anything to upset the Union. Give them everything they want. The problem is that Honeywell, at the executive level (Phoenix Aerospace), has a serious anti-union stance and is not willing to work with them or any other organized group. Because I am Management, I have seen Aerospace Corporate powerpoint presentations that sites having unions are to be "contained" or "eliminated". I can probably give you the server where to find this presentation. Eliminated means "transitioned" or closed. Aerospace has seen some of this activity through Gillette, Speranzo and Vidano (the real CHAMPION of Site Closures). I've been on a number of Collective Agreements. Let me tell you that the number and depth of derogatory comments that I heard at the Corporate level at midnight to 3:00 AM negotiations from "intelligent" people would make your ears curl. I have never heard such derogatory language from "intellegent" people. So I came to th econclusion that you don't have to be "intelligent" to be Honeywell Leadership. All you have to be is a bully - with an education less that high school. All you have to do is threaten everyone on a daily basis with their jobs - and you will be successful. Cote's bible! Or, is it Honeywell's culture? Wednesday, March 3, 2010 Cote is doing to Honeywell what he did to TRW and they were glad to see him go away. He was on that 10% reduction with them and almost crippled several internal departments with the reduction demanded each year. God help us if Obama picks him for a political appointment. Tuesday, March 2, 2010 I totally agree with the comment below on unions coming in. I have been to training classes that are supposed to help me identify union activity. I am supposed to tell why unions are not wanted. You know what? I am to a point where I would encourage people to get a union. HR doesn't want one so they can keep screwing us with no pushback. Evil will triumph when good men do nothing. I don't see another alternative to pushing back on HR, unless we have the numbers of a union. If we push back by ourselves, we are labeled as troublemakers. Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - "Stealing from the employees." That is the clearest and most concise description of today's Honeywell that I've seen. Thank you. And just when you think you've seen it all, when you think they've taken all there is, they find something else to pilfer. Again, and again, and again. Monday, March 1, 2010 I really can't understand the Phoenix area Aero HR policies. For HR being sooo afraid to have unions come in, they seem to be doing everything in their power to encourage one to come in. As a manager, I would expect HR to give me the tools I need to manage my group. Instead, HR says 10% of my group are poor performers that I must begin documenting in order to begin the termination process (yes, we have forced distributions that HR wont admit to). This year, Steve Kelley HR VP says 5 of the 9 blocks in the 9 block are "outer L" and they must be put on a PIP (personal improvement plan). The PIP states you must improve or be terminated. So even if its your first year in the outer L, you are now on a PIP. You get a PIP 2 years in a row, and you are gone. I really believe HR is tasked with reducing headcount without having an official layoff. No one could be so insane as to come up with these ridiculous policies unless they were intent on reducing headcount. And giving generous raises to the non-U.S. sites this year, while we get nothing is the ultimate insult. We are training those people. The sad thing is, I enjoy my job and the people I work with. I respect the Engineering management. HR is just ruining this company and making me look elsewhere. What value does HR add to the products we sell? NOTHING! Monday, March 1, 2010 - To add to the comments: I've since left Honeywell after a very long career there. As a consequence, I knew no other life. Life was very good prior to about 2001, but then it really went down the tubes very fast - but I didn't know it. When I was going home it was like replaying a nightmare. I only realized later what Diamond Dave, Gillette, Speranzo and Vidano did to the organization - for their own self benefit. Where I am now, there is no crap. Yes, there are issues as in any organization; but this place loves my contribution. At Honeywell, I was not loved - even at the senior level. Most of the problems came from the really tight centralized and autocratic control exzerted by Phoenix. There is even a case where a hamburger flipper became a Director. Can't say more - but the "hamburger flipper" words were by the fellows own admission on a multisite telecom. Honeywell WAS a good placeto work at - until Diaond Dave arrived at the scene. We know, that as a Republician, Diamond Dave really does not like the the heath benefits paid. So you have seen an annual paring back. Monday, March 1, 2010 As a manager at Honeywell, I can tell you the layoffs have multiple effects:
I am not based in Phoenix, so as far as management goes at Honeywell I am a nobody and my opinion is not important, but outside the castle walls things sure look different. What are you guys doing out there? Sunday, February 28, 2010 After seeing how Honeywell treats its employees, I feel an obligation to advise graduates and anyone else looking for work to skip Honeywell and look for a place where employees are valued and careers are possible. Honeywell has become a stagnant cesspool of despair where noxious gasses bubble to the surface in the form of periodic new directives from Diamond Dave or one of his lemmings. Some of us are stuck here, but we at least can do others a favor and help them avoid getting trapped in the slime. Sunday, February 28, 2010 Word on the street has it that the major airplane manufaturers no longer wish to have Honeyell on their platforms. What does that say for the future of the Honeywell Aerospace division? One by one our customers are leaving. If corporate relies on mergers and acquisitions for growth, they will surely fail. If any of these new aquisitions have Boeing or Airbus as a customer then they (Boeing/Airbus) will undoubtably leave. Diamond Dave's strategy is not only affecting employees, but customers as well. With an unmotivated workforce and a less than satisfied and dwindling customer base, it's no wonder that the stock is not performing to its potential. Has Wall Street caught on to Honeywell's propaganda machine? We can only hope so. Only Dave Cote's exit will give Honeywell any chance of turning things around for employees, customers and eventually the shareholders. After all, without a dedicated, highly motivated workforce and a satisfied and stable customer base, why would anyone want to invest in Honeywell? Sunday, February 28, 2010 I heard that Honeywell Aerospace will be doing lay-offs soon, combined with more furloughs. I am thinking the lay-offs will affect individuals who have 6 or greater on their performance. Any truth? Saturday, February 27, 2010 No raises this year! 25% MIP payout! I think everyone should be updating their resume and looking unless they want to continue to make involuntary contributions to the Dave Cote foundation and the Aero HQ Phoenix jobs bank for washed up managers. Though I guess the continued on the job training on power point BS and conference call buzzword bingo may count as "vocational training for the learning impaired". Maybe a tax deduction for that? Outside of ideological extremists or the US Government (who are both looking more and more alike these days, by the way), I cannot think of any causes less worthy to send money that I rightfully earned. I know life is not fair and to accept this, but I cannot believe that Honeywell leadership is not even interested in the APPEARANCE of fair treatment to the employees who worked so hard to keep our company profitable, wait are we still making a profit. Oh yes, I forgot, we are making BILLIONS of dollars and nobody gets a raise but senior executives. Friday, February 26, 2010 According to Bloomberg News, in 2008, the second-largest contributor to PAC's and political candidates was Honeywell International Inc. Honeywell gave $3.1 million for 2008, up from $1.6 million for 2006. Or this, from The China Post - Honeywell International Inc. Chief Executive Officer David Cote, whose corporate political action committee gave US$3.1 million to federal candidates and parties for 2008 campaigns, was invited to meet with President Barack Obama about proposals for an US$816 billion stimulus package. The whole purpose of CEOs and the corporate PACs making donations is to get on that guest list for whoever is running government. The whole purpose is to befriend whoever in the end is going to win so they can have access. It goes beyond this. If you check the federal candidates for office who received contributions from Honeywell, you'll find many of them from districts and states where Honeywell layoffs have hit the hardest. You can't even complain to your congressman or senator with any hope of consideration because they're already in Honeywell's pocket. Getting on this commission is no coincidence. It's about payback. It's about power. We've already seen how Diamond Dave manipulated the company for the benefit of upper management and to the detriment of the US workforce. What's next? Thursday, February 25, 2010 - On the topic of Cote on the deficit commission. Cote is the only Republician in this group. Remember that Republicians lost the ellection! They are in the DOG HOUSE. Congress is so divided that this Cote panel will have no teeth. So I would not worry that Cote will actually make a policy impact. But what I am concerned about that Cote will use this potential appointment to raise his personal profile with the wimpy Honeywell Board of Directors - a form of nepotism to enhance his personal benefit. What I would closely watch are the political contributions that are made subsequent to Cote's tenure. Pay more attention, not to what Cote contributes, but what his VPs and Directors are told to contribute. In the past I Googled on what Speranzo and Vidano contributed - among others. They were amanzingly similar and followed the pack. These are of public record. I'm wondering if there was any collusion or unspoken dirrective? Thursday, February 25, 2010 Cote for the new federal deficit commission? First thing he'll do is offshore all the little people's jobs, then give all the upper managers a bonus. Then he'll give Honeywell a bunch of no-bid contracts, (of course he'll still have shares in the company). So much for "Change we can believe in". Thursday, February 25, 2010 Well, Well! No raise, and I hope that Diamond Cote has large pockets to cart our money away. $ billion dollar company, and we cannot have a 1% raise. What’s up with that...? How can one Aero space site be completely controlled by the personnel in the H.R group (one individual). Doesn’t Cote know that, if it weren’t for the little people, his pockets would not be running over? Why doesn’t Cote invest his bonus money into his employees (the little people)? Thursday, February 25, 2010 Dave Cote will suggest that we outsource the entire Federal Government to China and Mexico. Tuesday, February 23, 2010 Good! Maybe if Cote goes after our top heavy government, he'll learn a thing or two.......and leave us alone for awhile. Tuesday, February 23, 2010 According to Business Week: U.S. President Barack Obama is considering Honeywell International Inc. chief executive officer David Cote for the new federal deficit commission. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-02-22/obama-said-to-be-considering-honeywell-chief-for-deficit-panel.html Why would Cote be considered on the list? We need to stop this from happening. Sunday, February 21, 2010 Call it the GE/Allied Signal culture, but the personification of that culture is Cote and the board. It is them upon whom the responsibility for the demise of legacy Honeywell rests. When the day comes (and it will) that talent and abilities become the differentiators between successful companies and those who merely wish they were, Honeywell will finally realize that they squandered the most important resource they ever had -- their employees. At that time one can only hope that there will be an accounting, and that these fools will be forced to leave after receiving the full measure of scorn they so richly deserve. Thursday, February 18, 2010 What built the legacy (red) Honeywell, and what has been destroyed by the Allied Signal/GE culture, is not a specific person or policy, but something simpler, and much deeper. It is the fact that management across the business no longer realizes that character is more important than personality, that education isn't the same thing as wisdom, and that business ambition that is untempered by common sense and experience is dangerous and unsustainable. Tuesday, February 16, 2010 Yes I also wondered how Vidano and Speranzo in Aerospace Aftermarket lived with themselves, carrying out Cote and Gillette's orders to hurt other people and do the wrong things for a company that was so many thousands of peoples' livelihood. It makes you wonder why people compromise and do what they do for money, and where their souls are. But then, Honeywell never paid me the kinds of bucks those guys earn, so I guess I will never know. Insignificant people like me actually have to look people in the eye when I tell them something and stand behind it with my actions. That used to be called leadership, before Honeywell became what it is today. I wonder if they live in such self deceit that they actually have no regrets. "Just business", they probably tell themselves. They will all be judged, and their arrogance or connections or money wont do anything to save them. I hope they find their way, even if it means finding a new beginning outside of Honeywell, before it is too late for them. Tuesday, February 16, 2010 This is so typical of the new Honeywell culture. Sleep with a potential customer, kiss his @$$ and promise him the moon. Then deliver an inferior product and lie, lie, lie to cover things up. The amount being spent to fix problems that were caused by either a bad design or something that we knew we couldn't deliver, staggers me. But like the best of politicians, management puts a great spin on things and makes it sound like we had to do it for the good of the company. Meanwhile profit margins go down and our formerly "top" customers say, "I've had enough" and give good money to our competition. But as long as Diamond Dave gets the thumbs up from the shareholders, then all must be good at the OK Corral. Monday, February 15, 2010 I have worked for Honeywell/AlliedSignal for 24 years. I have been in the manufacturing business for 33 years. Never, never have I been so demoralized as I am today. Our leadership (Dave Cote, et al) are traitors to the people that made this a premier company, and to the Unites States of America. My only prayer is that I can hold on long enough to make it to retirement in 2 years! I used to think this was a GREAT company - but no more! The middle level leadership is unable to speak the truth for fear of being terminated (many good leaders have already left) The only thing that matters is Cote and his bonus. God have mercy on his soul! Monday, February 15, 2010 Here is what there are going to say at the investor conference... "The economy has been bad during the past year, and we have seen that reflected in our sales figures. However, we have done better during this recession than we did during the last one, so the company is in good hands. We see very little growth for the first half of this year, but it will pick up in the second half of the year. To show you what a good and solid company this is, you will see that our free cash flow is still high. We have positioned ourselves solidly in the (insert buzzword here) market..." They will talk about high free cash flow and being poised for the future. They will not give anything definite and will dangle the carrot of growth at least 2 quarters out from where we are currently. They will talk in nebulous terms about investment and potential growth without giving any real numbers. They cannot give real numbers because the numbers show that investment in R&D has plummeted and their skilled workforce are leaving in droves. It is just going to be a whitewash of unverifiable statements such as "we are invested in our future" and some numbers obtained by some questionable accounting, or by giving incomplete information about how the numbers were obtained. Investors will go away feeling happy; Dave Cote will have pulled the wool over their eyes once again and the stock will stay about where it is now. However, as the recovery starts to pick up the pace and Honeywells numbers do not show as much growth as the rest of the economy, the investors are going to start asking questions. At that point, Dave Cote will say that he has navigated the company through hard times and that he is going to retire and spend more time with his family. The resultant bust that Honeywell goes through due to Dave's complete mismanagement of the whole deal, will be blamed on the new CEO. Sunday, February 14, 2010 I have been with Honeywell quite some time, and am sad to see what has been taking place recently. It is OK for a company to care about profit; that is why they exist. But there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. I have been reading these blogs with some interest for the past year or two, and am amazed at how negative everything is. There is ample opportunity at Honeywell that is not realized without taking it from the working people, especially while increasing rewards to the senior leadership team. We furlough only to ramp up to the next week. We cut pay on lower level people and leave the executives alone. We do not buy new equipment and instead enter into expensive operating leases or "maintenance agreements" that cost the company 3 times as much. We have hiring freezes but email after email comes out of Phoenix HQ announcing reorganizations, new directors, new VP's, new program managers. What's the difference after all, when they are the same people milking the system year after year? There are some good points about working at Honeywell, though I have yet to find anything good about the type of leadership that comes from our Phoenix HQ. There is a complete lack of diversity there, since they spend their whole lives out there in the desert and have no perspective on what happens outside of Phoenix, which now is most of the work in Aerospace. The plants in Phoenix are not leaders in efficiency, HSE, cost, quality, human relations, or delivery. It is a shame that this happens right under our so called leaders' noses. Anyone that remembers engines knows what I mean. Do as I say, not as I do in my own house. This type of hypocracy must end. Are we here to turn a profit or not? If so, empower the people closest to the action to make decisions like hiring, firing, captial spend, etc. and hold them accountable. Funny how that actually works at other companies. If you want mindless lackeys running the plants in the field, pay them all $40,000 and keep on with your spreadsheets, conference calls, and micromanagement, because the managers that are WORTH more than that have had it and are all probably out looking. I say - start with the bloated Phoenix gravy train and start setting a higher standard for the rest of us. The jobs bank out there has to come to an end, and the tenured managers/directors/ OE specialists/HOS specialists/ etc.. out there doing nothing but making slides and hosting conference-calls need to be held accountable or eliminated. Have you ever heard of a VP cutting his staff to set an example? Or is that just what is expected of a plant manager or program manager? This has to come to a stop sooner or later. I hope you guys wake up out there... Saturday, February 13, 2010
Check out this little jewel of information - Saturday, February 13, 2010 All of these sound bits accurately reflect the angst and demoralized state of the most valuable part of Honeywell - its employees, AKA intellectual capital. Honeywell only cares about profit, which is clearly evidenced by the amount of time devoted to monitoring and managing its finances. There are no real long term business plans for growth and IR&D. Instead it’s the same old thing day after day of what’s our revenue and gross margin numbers and what are you doing about increasing it? And my favorite management attempt at motivation…. “Well if you don’t fix it we’ll find someone who will, and you're out!” Friday, February 12, 2010 So, Honeywell is having its Annual Investor Conference on Monday, February 22. It's the dog-and-pony show, where major investors are lubricated not to sell their shares. But going into this meeting, Honeywell shares have declined significanly and can't seem to sustain an upward trend. Normally you would fire the CEO for this performance. Focus of the meeting are presentions for China & India. If you look at the metrics of growth for these areas versus North America, North America has actually out performed since 1975. This ia also the concensus by economists. The expectation is that they will out perform in the coming years. But if the US comsumer is not buying, these economies won't go anywhere. Friday, February 12, 2010 You can't go wrong with Trane. When I have to get service because of down-time on my chillers, I am able to call the technician directly on his cell phone - even on long weekends. No hastles. As you can guess, long weekends is when the equipment usually has issues. Go figure. When I call Honeywell for a tech, I always got an answering service or they bogged me down with quotations and purchase order requests. How do you get that administrative support on a long weekend? What I missed telling you is that I am a Honeywell employee - on the same dammed team! You wouldn't know it, though. The experience is like dealing long-distance with China. Johnson Controls is even superior to Honeywell when it comes to customer service. Johnson Controls also has direct access to techs when there are issues. The paperwork is always taken care of later and it is always fair. When you call them, they have a live person on the phone who really knows her stuff. The issue here is company orientation. Others, with their structure, are truly oriented to the customer. Honeywell is oriented to the Accountant first, and maybe the customer later - if he pays a premium and if they have time. Note that Speranzo (a hot topic in previous blogs below) forced all of us to switch all of out services to Honeywell - a method of forcing internal Honeywell sales inspite of quality of service. We knew that Honeywell would only turn around and re-source the contract to Trane and Johnson Controls after taking a healthy profit. So this is the problem with Honeywell. With all the high level rhetoric, the place has lost contact with the people on the floor that know best. ALL decision are centralized in Morristown or Phoenix Wednesday, February 10, 2010 I came across an article today concerning Honeywell http://www.patriotledger.com/news/x210267296/Marshfield-energy-audit-under-way-after-officials-decide-against-hiring-Honeywell. Does anyone know about the "shoddy workmanship and overcharging" mentioned in the article? Wednesday, February 10, 2010 I think we have far too many directors and VP's and people who say they are managing the business in Phoenix and not enough people servicing customers or doing the work. Aerospace is so top heavy it is ready to collapse. How many people do we need doing "operations excellence" or telling everyone "we are just resources, you own these processes and the progress"? These people are part of a bloated cost structure that makes Diamond Dave think the answer is laying people off. Aero headquarters is a jobs bank for mediocre managers, the only thing you need to be eligible for the welfare program is an Arizona zip code. Monday, February 8, 2010 Diamond Dave couldn't do "Undercover CEO" because he is so stuck on himself that there are pictures and video of him everywhere. I would know that weasel if he showed up one day for me to train. I might have to even give him a forearm shiver or two as well. He wouldn't want to be exposed for being such a scumbag. Hopefully that show will help these CEO's realize that the people you treat so bad are the ones keeping you in your position. Monday, February 8, 2010 After working 29 years at Honeywell I have nothing but regrets. I sometimes feel ill just thinking about coming to work... so much stress. The employees are treated less than human. I treat my dog better. I pray everyday that they shut down this plant and outsource everything. I tried to take the RIF but was not lucky enough to get it. I would just quit even knowing that there are no jobs out there if I could only get unemployment until I can find another job. Getting a job here was the worst mistake I ever made and I would not advise anyone to work for Honeywell... ALL I want is out and a way to support my family... will keep praying for another layoff. So many people I work with feel the same way. Pray with me. Sunday, February 7, 2010 I bet Diamond Dave Cote would never have the ball to do CBS' "Undercover Boss". Sunday, February 7, 2010 - To the poster of Feb. 3: Consider that what has happened to you since UOP was bought by Honeywell is a microcosm of what has been happening to the rest of us since old Honeywell was acquired by Allied Signal (and other companies that have been purchased since then.) We feel your pain, because we've been experiencing the same thing, only longer. To Diamond Dave, employees aren't resources; they are a drain on the company's profitability. Something to be screwed, used, and abused to benefit stockholders, until they are eventually disposed of with the trash. As painful as it is, you guys would be well advised to forget any and everything you may have felt about company loyalty, and depart asap. It will only continue to get worse, with the attendant negative affect on attitudes and mental health. Diamond Dave wouldn't have gotten the message even if you stood up and left the room en masse. Here's how Wikipedia defines 'psychopath': "A personality disorder whose hallmark is a lack of empathy. Researcher Robert Hare, whose Hare Psychopathy Checklist is widely used, describes psychopaths as "intraspecies predators who use charisma, manipulation, intimidation, ..... to control others and to satisfy their own needs. Lacking in conscience and empathy, they take what they want and do as they please, violating social norms and expectations without guilt or remorse. What is missing, in other words, are the very qualities that allow a human being to live in social harmony." Psychopaths are glib and superficially charming, and many psychopaths are excellent mimics of normal human emotion; some psychopaths can blend in, undetected, in a variety of surroundings, including corporate environments." Sound like anybody we know? Sunday, February 7, 2010 I just found this blog this morning and find it quite interesting. Most things are pretty accurate. Gillette ruled by fear and now he's gone, but don't think that environment is gone because it didn't start at his level and Cote is still here. For those of you much earlier in the blog who say "Honeywell" messed things up when they took over, you are sorely mistaken. Even though the press called it a merger, make no mistake Allied Signal "bought" Honeywell. They only kept the Honeywell name because it had better brand recognition. As a 25+ year heritage Honeywell employee, I can guarantee you the management style that took over in 1999 was nothing like heritage Honeywell, so please don't try to say this company represents what Honeywell was all about. John C. Honeywell has been rolling in his grave ever since that dreadful day. Also keep in mind there are no heritage Honeywell people in exec. management - they were all driven out by Allied Signal and GE - the clones. With that said, I agree that morale is at an all time low - and we've had rough patches before, but nothing like this. I try to keep a positive attitude thinking the worst is over, and every day I go to work I am unpleasantly surprised that it isn't. Our product quality continues to fall beause of standardization and the fear factor discussed elsewhere in this blog (everyone in middle management being afraid to say no - that won't work in our business). I'm sorry but I will say it - one size DOES NOT fit all (and that's why my management keeps me away from exec mgmt because they know I won't keep my mouth shut). Building things for Space, Missiles and Munitions is a far cry different than building things for commercial or even military aircraft (much less Home and Building controls). The government should be really worried. Especially about outsourcing. I get involved quite frequently in "what-ifs" and am appalled and amazed at the things our exec management even wants us to consider, especially in the business unit I work in. If Honeywell executives had their way, the entire company, except the executives in Phoenix and Morristown, would be outsourced. The government needs to realize that Honeywell is no longer a company who really cares all that much about the Defense and Space business. They don't care about your requirements or your needs. They'll take your money, but other than that they don't care, make no mistakes. And the ones that take all the punishment for late deliveries, overruns, failures, etc. are the dedicated workers, who are told by upper managment to "fix it" but aren't provided the tools or the envirnoment to do so. Even though there are still a lot of empoyees left who care about doing a good job, the stress level is driving a lot of good ones away, because they can't compromise their personal values to satisfy management goals. Even though the economy is bad and it's not a good time to change jobs (something HI mgmt definitely takes advantage of), even though it will have negative effects on retirement, I can tell you I am out looking. And yes, I have already commented on the White House contact-us website. Saturday, February 6, 2010 I will say it again. We all se what is going on with Honeywell and all the major corporations in America. Amreica is being sold out by them. If Obama is focusing on jobs now. He has to hear us. Go to www.whitehouse.gov and email the President with a link to this weblog. There is strength in numbers. We, the people, ARE America! And we have a president and Congress and Senate that works for us. Make some noise, people. Friday, February 5, I agree with the comments on Aero leadership. They just keep recycling the same people in Phoenix, we will never go anywhere. Rob Gillette got what he deserved and the First Solar board is now asking themselves why they spent so much money on a guy who is such a dud. Maybe he got over there and figured out it was more difficult than shutting down factories and moving them to China and Mexico. Wednesday, February 3, 2010 Diamond Dave was on a little press and politics junket to Des Plaines on 2/2. Touting the new "Honeywell" biodiesel that UOP developed, he had some allegedly non-corrupt US House Rep take a spin in a big Chevy truck powered by the stuff. While The Man himself was here and wasn’t too busy overtly pressuring senior management to join the HIPAC (Honeywell International Political Action Committee), he took an hour out of his time to have a little talk with about 400 UOP employees. I say 400 because the “conversation” was limited to one live room with a limit of 300 and two satellite rooms in Des Plaines that had limited capacity as well. It was not broadcast or available via telecon anywhere else. The meeting started with the usual stuff that I gather is common from The Man. He talked about the stock, the dividend, and the Wall Street analysts that he would love to be able to coerce by any means into driving the stock price higher. Then he talked about how important the stock was. Then he talked about the importance of the stock some more. He did also mention that he also has to consider customers and employees at some point, but I believe that was because his handlers told him to do so in that little ear bud we could not see. Surprisingly, I can’t say it was boring. It was more shocking than anything that he was facing a room full of people and couldn’t even pretend that we mattered. I guess he may be sociopath enough to tell the truth as he sees it and think everyone else feels the same way. He also talked a lot about “bad companies” versus “bad times” and attempted to convince us that this was all due to bad times. Seriously, why waste a crisis? Most of the rest of his delightful time with us was devoted to Q&A, which started off slow. Who wants to complain to glittery Diamond Dave Cote when he’s standing right in front of you and has the power to make you a distant memory before you even leave the room? But the questions eventually heated up. I didn’t take notes and do not have a great memory for the spoken word, so I’ll summarize his answers to the top few questions as best I can recall:
I guess it boils down to a basic philosophy difference: real customers and real employees versus faceless shareholders represented by analysts that have no moral position in what transpires between the employees and customers. UOP culture focuses on the customers first, then the employees, and the shareholders have historically benefitted from the success of the former pair. Honeywell culture focuses on the shareholder with no consideration for the customer beyond what money they have and zero consideration for the employee. I fear greatly for UOP, its customers, its employees, and their families. Diamond Dave does not. Tuesday, February 2, 2010 The damage that Gillette, Speranzo (VP Integrated Supply Chain) and Vidano (VP Aftermarket Service)have caused, is trancending. The damaging trio! Gillette went to First Solar. Look at the stock FLSR. It's in the dumpster as when Gillette abandoned Honeywell for First Solar. Speranzo wanted Gilletts's job, but didn't get it - so he went in limbo looking for a new career. Tim M. had no place fo Neal. Vidano also abdoated to Defense & Space - with the depature of Gillette. I wonder if he will live up to the title of Champion of Out-Sourcing in Defence and Space - with th egouverment looking iover his back? It's amazing how damaging, fickle and irresponsible these executies are. While they were in place, they reigned through fear! This is their legacy. Monday, February 1, 2010 It's amazing what a place like Honeywell can do to you. Last Christmas I was doing a bit of Christmas shopping, like many people around. Normally I go about my bsiness, spread a bit of holiday cheer and even hold doors open for people. But, in this one case, I saw a lady that purchased a Honeywell humidifier. And for some reason, the characteristic red and white box markings just set me off - an event that has never happened before. Instead of just passing by and rushing to my next destination, I stopped, took the lady aside and explained to her why she should NOT buy a Honeywell product - like the humidifier. Clearly the origins of this spontaneous eratic behavior were in the antics that Aerospace execs would play - who are all gone from Aerospace today - Gilette, Speranzo and Vidano. The latter of these came to be known as the Site Closure Champion. Word always went out prior to his visite for everyone to be on their best behavior - because his reputation preceeded him. Great environment! <> The point is that every persons job outsourced you have one less salesperson for Honeywell product. You will tell 2 people the good news, but tell 10 people the bad news. Monday, February 1, 2010 The funny thing about the Secretary of Treasury visiting here was - right behind him, literally, there were 3 Honeywell employees from Mexico videotaping a line they are sending South of the border. Sunday, January 31, 2010 I just emailed the President and copied the address of this blog with a plea for help. Again, go to www.whitehouse.gov and go to the "contact us" web-page. If enough of us do this, he will at least hear us. Saturday, January 30, 2010 Working as a CSR in S&C, it is very difficult at times to hear so many customers express frustration as to the inability to supply products on-time and on a consistent basis. Once a week it is expressed that the brand of Honeywell will never be purchased again because of the high prices and inability to produce the parts in a timely manner. Jobs that are scheduled to take 4 weeks often take 6-8 to complete, and customers refuse to accept the time that engineer's may take to do their part before production gets the job on the floor. We've seen orders be in the engineer/design phase for 30-45+ days and then have the 4-10 week lead time on top of that. Try explaining that to the engineer at a major university or NASA, Parker Hannifan, Baxter, etc., etc. every day. At times all you can do is tell the csutomer they have every right to be upset and hope they don't yell at you too much before hanging up on you. Honeywell seemed like a mess when I started, and, after reading this blog, I see the the inadequacies are all over the company and not just limited to my location. Now with rumors of more lay-offs and furloughs hovering over the whole company, what I thought would be a great career move by joining Hoenwyell turns out to be more of a dead end with no future. After seeing people with 10, 15, 20 or more years be let go, there is no reason to think my job is safe. Friday, January 29, 2010 I see that EMAI held their kickoff meeting in Monte Carlo this week. This makes the effort of enforcing the furlough total BS. Friday, January 29, 2010 I think someone should contact Michael Moore and have him do a documentary on how Aerospace is shipping high tech (or at least as high tech as you can go when a company won't by new equipment and wants to use duck tape and coathangers for maintenance) manufacturing jobs to Asia, which will lead to the Chinese developing an aerospace industry that will one day allow their Air Force to challenge ours. Well, at least we will have highly paid people at AERO HQ in Phoenix who can make power-point slides to describe their progress to the general public. Good thing we are expanding the number of people in our company who work THERE. What business does Dave Cote have at the white house, begging for money, when he does not even try to pretend that he cares about new hires, expansion, or capital purchases in the US? Friday, January 29, 2010 The president claimed to keep jobs from being outsourced in most of his election speeches, but yet we are still hearing about more positions disappearing. Employees are being forced to travel to Mexico and train individuals to take more American jobs and nothing is being done about it. Sometimes I wonder if we should be afraid more of Bin Laden, or Dave Cote and his actions. I also wonder if the president even cares. All of them since H.W. Bush haven't done anything about NAFTA and the destruction of what made our country great: Manufacturing. Friday, January 29, 2010 - Comments to "whitehouse.gov": Got it. Done. Who's next? What next? Thursday, January 28, 2010 If you really want the government to know what is happening at Honeywell e-mail the president on www.whitehouse.gov. Tell the president about outsourcing at Honeywell. If enough employees do this maybe someone will listen. Today one of the presidents advisors is at the Golden Valley plant in MN. Thursday, January 28, 2010 One can only hope that when it finally comes to the government's attention what Cote and the board have done to their US employees that there will be sufficient punishment involved to make it hurt...and hurt bad. Traitors. Thursday, January 28, 2010 Officially / Unofficially. The new policy is there are no progressions(being promoted in your current job). Of course they do not have the guts to tell all the worker bees. The only way you can get a promotion is to apply for a higher level job. And, of course, there are not many new job posting. In all the surveys, the US employees say there is no career growth opportunities. This new policy sure helps. NOT. Plus, no merit increases this year too. It just keeps getting better. Honeywell Management figures that in the US it is hard to get another job. "You are lucky you got a job and you should leave if you do not like it". Honeywell's new mantra. Wednesday, January 27, 2010 At 9:29 PM Jan 27, 2010, Obama said in his live speech that it is time to slash the tax incentives for those companies that ship jobs to China. This applies big time to Honeywell in a big way! Honeywell is one of the largest exporters of jobs overseas - they do it very secretively. It's time to hang Cote ("Et tu, Brute") & his Board of Directors and piers and their outsourcing policies. We need to recognize that these people are evil and do not have the interests of the USA employee at heart. USA is becoming second place to Germany and France - who are seriously re-investing in their economies. Just listen to the convesation about replacing the US dollar with the Euro as a currency standard. It may be crazy to think this would happen, but with the increasing US debt and 10+% unemployment, a lot of countries are really nervous about holding US dollars. Cote is so passé - so 20th century, so OLD - like the dinosaure of GE Capital of Jack Welch age. We know today, after the GE crisis, that Jack used GE Capital to mask (cook the books) many of GE's problems. No one talks about Jack anymore. Neutron Jack has been neutronized! It's 9:55 PM. I don't see Cote rubbing sholders with Obama as he did when Obama started his term. Has there been afalling out? See this evidence in previous blogs on this website. So that was the State of the Union address. People are out of work in America! How long will you stand for it? Why does Cote use Americans to work against Americans? Cote uses American Transition Teams to ship your jobs to China. I had spoken to one transition team member. He had told me that he was on 26 transitions teams. That means product move was being planned at 23 sites. Perhaps you are one of them? Monday, January 25, 2010 - HOS- Honeywell overseas: Good luck USA.! Dave Cote and most of his "crew" will be long gone before we see the full impact of the hemorrhaging of jobs. They are heroes to the stockholders today but will be seen as the sleazebags they really are in the future. I hope they can be happy in some of those third world countries that will own our jobs. I guess with Dave's bonuses he could always buy his own county. It seems like a very long time since I worked for a company that I could be proud of.
Retired Manager Monday, January 25, 2010 Is there a nation wide freeze on raises? Or is it just the Olathe, Kansas location? Most of the employees at that site have long since stopped believing anything the managers say. (Oh and don't forget to do your yearly code-of-conduct training.) Sunday, January 24, 2010 I currently work for Honeywell in New York. Honeywell acquired the Pittway Corporation (Ademco) back in 1999 and I have slowly watched the jobs move to Mexico and China. Instead of leading the market with new products we now follow. I have seen many competitors’ products being analyzed so we can design an equivalent product. The smart ones in my department left a few years ago. Engineering is slowly being moved (hardware/software/QA) to China and India. I have heard our raises this year will be 2% but they will not be given in April (April fool’s day!!), they will be pushed back a few months. Furloughs may also take place after the first quarter. I also heard the building will be empty in about 1.5 years when the lease is up. Morale is low but most of us really don't care anymore. If you work hard or do the minimum you are treated the same. Sit back, do the minimum and job search. I will not help transfer my job out of the country.
Sincerely, Saturday, January 23, 2010 VOTE! VOTE Your conscience - VOTE for your brothers and sisters around the world! VOTE! Saturday, January 23, 2010 This isn't directed so much at Dave Cote, as it is towards the Board of Directors. I work in one of your facilities. I have worked there for a long time and I plan on trying to do many more years until I retire. I have pretty much given the best years of my life to this company. I have given up time with family on holidays so I could cover for a guy who just happened to have the opportunity to spend Christmas with his. I have been with guys who trudge through the muck of a creek at 1:00 AM on a very very cold night out of concern for their neighbors and their health and security during an environmental excursion. I have seen guys come to the aid of a fallen coworker and go above and beyond in their efforts to revive that friend and coworker. I have lived and bled with the guys for a long time. Ok? See where I coming from with this? So let's cut to the chase. You have taken away my retiree insurance plan. You have taken away half of the 401 matching percentage you contibute. For those lucky enough to even be able to participate, that is. Some poor bastards don't even get that. You have, after have giving us 2% raises last year and week long furloughs, announced that this years raises are going to be reassessed at the end of the 2nd quarter as to whether the company can aford it or not. And, all the while sending out SM updates about the millions and millions of dollars to be made over the next 3 to 5 years. All this as the economy crumbled and the cost of living shot up through the roof. Now don't get me wrong, I really thought the million dollar aid package and the humanitarin flights to Haiti was I a very kind response to peoples suffering. You should be applayded for the effort. So with that said, let me conclude with a question...... Shouldn't one of you guys at the top really let Dave Cote and your other cohorts know that there has been a building collapsing for a few years now, and it is landing on me and my family. Both, my family at home and my family at work. How about a little charity around here? Friday, January 22, 2010 - To the individual who asked about the 2009 Honeywell Proxy statement: No, the board's comp package is on page 15, they took a little over $2MM together, around $250K each. Not bad for attending 5-6 meetings per year. Page 25 outlines the merit increases in base pay our officers qualified for and received, a year when no hourly or mid level managers were eligible. Page 28-29 outline the ridiculous bonuses officers, including Cote and Gilette, received. Page 36 outlines the nearly $80,000,000 in salary, stock, and bonus our CEO and four other top Honeywell officers combined earned in 2008. Page 51 shows their golden parachutes, or how many millions they would get by getting "dismissed without cause" or for other reasons, like a buyout. I guess that is what a RIF is called when you are a big-time executive. The employees I laid off last year got squat. I am not saying all executives do not earn their pay, not at all. I am sure many of them worked very hard to achieve their goals and try their best. But in a year when my family's already meager income was reduced 10% and we had to put groceries on our credit card, the fact that these guys not just took home millions, but accepted RAISES for hitting cost targets that were partially possible because of wage cuts simply disgusts me. The fact that they are all hell bent on moving our manufacturing base to China to continue meeting these targets (vs. improving what we have here in the US and EMEA) infuriates me. Leaders should share sacrafice and lead by example. Or at least be smart enough to pretend that they do when so many people are watching. To hell with them all. Friday, January 22, 2010 You bet! I'm glad the blogger noticed, I did the calc. and total of senior management compensation plus board of directors (each is paid about 2X the average US board salary) comes to roughly $75 million if I throw in some of the perks, etc. If you divide that number by the 2008 income from operations, I come up with about 2.5 percent. If a mutual fund charged this kind of management fee, I think it would be very questionable. This is beyond belief Thursday, January 21, 2010 I'm not a financial wiz, but after looking at last year's proxy statement, did the board of directors rape the company for over 70 mil? Wednesday, January 20, 2010 Customers screaming for their parts. But some customers like United Technologies and Pratt & Whitney have cauht on long ago with their policy to get off of Honeywell programs and parts. Their attitude is: "Anybody but Honeywell". And they have just cause. Wednesday, January 20, 2010 After this week through overtime, mostly everybody on the shop floor will have managed to make back any lost wages due to the furlough. And at time-and-a-half we only have to work just over 26.5 hours. Not a bad deal! Sure, our on time delivery is down to 50% and our profit margin is non existent. But our middle management is the best in the business at cooking the books and making excuses. Customers screaming for their parts. Who cares. It's not like they can go to Walmart for a part. They are getting screwed and there is not much that they can do about it. You've got a sweet deal Dave Cote! As for us, we're just lucky to be working under you. Wednesday, January 20, 2010 I recently had to do an RPS (Rapid Problem Solving) - over-used & huge waste of time. It was about why deliveries were being missed for a certain part number. What it came down to (already known) was that a cell was hogging the test equipment, basically 24/7, and we had no time allocated to it. But during the proposed fix I was told to not mention this. I was "advised" to instead propose that we dedicate more techs to testing these parts. No one ever questions how we could test these parts if we still didn't have access to the test equipment. So, your bonuses are safe. No need to purchase more test equipment. The problem has been swept under the rug! P.S.Military programs should be very worried. Tuesday, January 19, 2010 Interesting, reading all these posts. As an ex-Honeywell employee I can only say I'm glad I left this dysfunctional outfit. Believe me there is life after Honeywell. No more corporate ra-ra-ra and all these BS Townhall meetings. I will never work for a publicly-traded company again. The guys on top of the ladder get the big Bonuses, the guys at the bottom the shaft. Look no further than Wallstreet. These "Spindoctors" walked away with Millions in compensation. Good luck to all of you. Finding another Job is hard work, but if you really want a change you have to be determined and believe in yourself. There are better companys out there; just don't give up. Monday, January 18, 2010 Yes. At my site it got to a point that we could not even buy a 2"x4" piece of lumber without being on COD. Reason was that Honeywell (Phoenix) actually exceeded the 90-day pay period. So the supliers clamped down one after the other to COD. It would have been easier to get petty cash and go get it yourself - but even petty cash was eliminated. Your only option was to pay for it out of your own pocket and really risk it not being paid on a expense report. No one had enough faith in Honeywell to assume that this expense report would be paid. I'd rather buy a 2x4 and wack the Aerospace Leadership in the head - really disconnected from the needs of the floor and day to day needs that they themselves requested. It must make a business leader look stupid to report on a leadership or sales call that he can't ship product because shipping lumber is not available for the shipping crates. But, no leader will be caught dead reporting this on a telecom. So, we end up taking expensive labor ripping apart wasted crates and rebuilding new ones - a process that costs a lot more than having the right materials in the first place. Way to go, Aerospace Leadership! Aerospace Leadership needs to start supporting the floor - not in conflict with the floor. Monday, January 18, 2010 When and where? And what do we do when we get there? Monday, January 18, 2010 Yes, we can do this and join as a 401k employee share band. Lets get together at the Annual Shareholders Meeting and ask tough questions! Done? Monday, January 18, 2010 - Regarding the 75 or 90 day terms: This is Honeywell’s way of maximizing profit by, essentially, getting a short term loan from their suppliers. Remember from Economics 101 Time Value of Money? In essence Honeywell needs to maximize profit from finance gimmicks not sales of quality products that are profitably priced in an open market. Pity the small Mom and Pop companies that can’t tell Honeywell to “go pound sand”. This strategy is a slow death to them while turning down Honeywell’s orders is a fast death. Sunday, January 17, 2010 Has any employee thought about leveraging the votes associated with our collective 401k shares to make our voices heard to the board of directors, specifically on executive pay? Coming off our furlough, seems like the time for this is about right. I think we could have all exercised our right to have a say at the shareholder's meeting or get something on the ballot that would at least force the company officers to share in any type of pay cut or furlough they pushed down to lower level employees. Or better yet, show them what a wage cut feels like by forcing the board of directors to allow shareholders to vote on this. Go to the company website, investor relations section and view the 2009 Honeywell proxy statement. This is a public document and is official communication from Honeywell to the investing public. Pages 20-53 of this document outline our CEO's and his cronies disgusting pay package. Pages 20-30 outline how Dave and his boys NEED a competitive pay package related to business results, not like we do, we are just lucky to have a job, right? It even mentions the same Honeywell behaviors that we supposedly all work to, but it manages to justify raises for the guys at the top and NOTHING for the people whose backs they stand on. Funny how they tell us these lies and then steal our merit raises and base salary and then cash their options in the next day. Grotesque that our board permits it. Page 37 of the 2009 proxy statement outlines the "perks" that the company pays for. Over $900,000 for things like the use of the company jet and company bought life insurance and Dave Cote's home alarm system. How many engineers took a 10% pay cut in 2009 to pay for this? Page 51 shows Diamond Dave's $14.85 million golden parachute, which he would receive if he was ever terminated by the board for any reason. How many weeks of severance did we give the machinists, CSR's, and forklift drivers affected by the last RIF? Not even close to this.... What about the over 50's that were forced to retire because Honeywell did not want to help them with medical insurance they promised them years before? This information is public and on our website. We should print and post it in breakrooms all across the company. It is grotesque that our leaders in Phoenix and Morristown can be so arrogant, greedy, and selfish while honest people suffer. Somebody needs to do something. These guys are stealing not just from us, but from America. And its all right here under our noses, down to the last cent. Can we band together as shareholders and use our 401K shares to push the board to vote on reducing executive perks and compensation? Anyone know if we can do this? Sunday, January 17, 2010 The net-90 terms is going to kill us. There are suppliers who are now holding us hostage if we do not pay in 30. Their terms are "want your parts pay me in 30 or else". The supply base is onto our game. Most of the Honeywell companies were small to begin with and use suppliers local to their area who had the expertise to make the product required. We recently had to attend a webinar that all new orders had to be net 75 and if not took PHX approval. DO these guys have nothing to do down there??? I am all for doing what is necessary for the company but we are now negotiating from the end of a gun on all of our contracts. I equate PHX with the wizard of OZ. They are running a company based upon theories that are not practical in day-to-day business. When you expose them they run for cover. I have exposed a few and they know I document VERY WELL so they leave me alone most of the time. Out here in the real world (away from PHX) we get the job done. Saturday, January 16, 2010 Ditto the earlier comments about permanent commitment being around CAPITAL and NEW HIRES. I cannot even get a plumber or a welder to come out to our site because of our payment terms. It is pitiful that a major corporation has been reduced to gimmicks like "paying net 90" to make cash flow look good. How about making a quality product by people who are treated well? That may lead to cash flow from our customers? Withholding cash flow from small US-owned businesses will do the trick for only so long. It is a disgrace. Saturday, January 16, 2010 Apparently Servicon employees at Honeywell were notified today that they need not report to work the week after Easter. Happy Furlough! Friday, January 15, 2010 - Re: Jan. 11 Here in Toronto... I got laid off in Vancouver recently and totally agreed with you on the low morale, HOS/VSMs/metrics hiding inefficiencies. It makes me feel better that most of us can see the company is going down fast with all the “yes” management from top to bottom. Friday, January 15, 2010 Red Headed stepchild? Everyone is a stepchild next to the phoenix golden boys. I work in Aerospace Aftermarket and I can't understand why our leaders come from Phoenix engines, a complex that was evidently so well managed that it is shutting down and moving to Mexico. And it was not even a union plant, not that you would have guessed it was union free by visiting. Yet everyone outside of Phoenix is always judged by higher standards. What a great training academy for manufacturing managers who feel more comfortable with acronyms and power points than making their employer a profit! Now they are all directors and VP's, leading Aerospace into the twenty first century. Do as we say in Phoenix, not as we do in Phoenix... Put THAT in a spreadsheet matrix! Thursday, January 14, 2010 When the earthquake hit China, Dave Cote was quick to encourage employees to give to recovery and aid efforts. Of course it was was to show good faith to his growing interest (of siphoning America to the Chinese). Now that Haiti is in trouble, do you think he'll do the same? I would actually be surprised to see an all-employee email asking for Haiti relief. Wednesday, January 13, 2010 In the Town Hall meeting, Cote said the company's actions are actually benefitting America. Yea, just like in the 30's when they said cigarette smoking benefitted your health by encouraging deep breathing exercises. Tuesday, January 12, 2010 Here at Honeywell Aerospace, Tucson, we have always been considred a "red headed step child" to Phoenix. We have no resources or people left here. We are less then half the employees we had 15 years go. Most of the Engineering work is "overseeing" engineers overseas who are doing the work we use to do. Hardware, software, Test Equipment- everything.Manufacturing moves something to Mexico or overseas each month. There is no morale. Tucson has ben told by Aerospace VP's, "You're lucky you still have a job. And if you do not like it - then leave." A wonderful place to work! I do not see Honeywell getting any better. I have been at Honeywell 20+ years. Time to leave. Tuesday, January 12, 2010 I think the only way to draw attention to this is to find some organization (not affiliated with a labor union) that communicates with Congress to promote investment in America's manufacturing infrastructure and seeks to stop this type of activity. Honeywell should be LEADING something like this, and with the amount of Government contracts and business we have, we are eating at the trough of military sales and service, and selling out our employees that work on the commercial side where we can to move skill sets and capabilities out of our country, perhaps forever. Someone needs to mobilize an effort beyond the plight of just one factory because a pattern that spans multiple congressional districts has been emerging for several years now and we cannot make it stop by talking to Phoenix or Morristown or complaining on this blog.. Any ideas? Monday, January 11, 2010 It's interesting to hear the same stories from our cousins down south. Here in Toronto the morale couldn't be lower. One minute we are told to use airlines to travel and help our own business, and the next minute we are given a 1 week furlough. Sorry Dave. I can't travel if I lose 10% of my wages. But then again, you don't really care, do you? So our plant isn't the only one that needs new equipment or repairs. You can only lean out a process so far with antiquated technology. But it's amazing how the middle managers can hide the inadequacies under the carpet to make any HOS driven changes look good. The sad truth is that efficiencies aren't going up, but the VSM's will do anything to fudge the metrics. But then again Dave, you don't really care, do you? I thought we were the only ones complaining about the management Gods of Phoenix, but after reviewing the previous blogs I guess it's true. We are all fed (mis)directions by the same blind, dumb, tentacled octopus that is the Aerospace leadership. How they know our needs from thousands of miles away I'll never know. Oh but they must be smart with all their MBA's. Surely Diamond Dave would never leave a division is such incompetent hands. But then again Dave, you don't really care, do you? I'm sure that this coming year you will get your well deserved bonus, more stock options and a standing ovation from the stockholders. I almost forgot...I'm sure that many families in China and India will also thank you. Ain't capitalism great! BTW. I'll make sure to post some MIS on our bulletin boards up here in the great white north. Remember. There is strength in numbers. Wall Street...are you listening? Monday, January 11, 2010 One of the other issues is even if you find someone with the power to make change happen in Honeywell they are paralyzed with fear because they know that if they make a mistake (or it looks like they made a mistake even if it was not their fault) then they will be fired. They don't even have to make a mistake, they just have to do something that upsets someone higher up. Monday, January 11, 2010 -Re: Jan 11 "management make changes": That's great in concept, but in Honeywell centralized management system, I don't know who these people "with power to make changes" are. They certainly aren't in the HPS level, or even ACS. Do you really think Fradin can make any changes? He can't spend a penny beyond AOP. Only Cote has that Authority. Monday, January 11, 2010 Simply don't understand why managment, and those with power to make changes, can not see what is happening before their eyes? HPS is losing business and clients rapidly due to competition providing better service and more relevant technology. Yet we are told our systems and technology is world leading - but someone's forgot to tell our customers who simply don't believe it. Please Please Please take some action. Sunday, January 10, 2010 There obviously are some very intelligent and experienced bloggers on here. What can we do other than "bail"? This obviously is not the climate to be hunting for a new job. Nor does that address the real concern of allowing these guys to sellout our country. What constructively can we do? Friday, January 8, 2010 Diamond Dave, his parasites, *and* the dim-bulb political enablers who either are on the take, or else too obtuse to grasp the rape that Dave and other CEO's are perpetrating right under the pol's noses. Capitalism is a great concept right up until it's exploited and abused. No one ever imagined that the Internet and global communication would make this level of corruption possible. Friday, January 8, 2010 Smaller companies are where the growth will be, both in AMERICAN jobs and in returning to the local economy. I worked for Honeywell until 2009 and went to work for a medium sized company and am amazed at the no BS approach to results and the sense of commitment to employees and being a permanent fixture in our community (hiring, training, capital investment, vendor relations, etc...) When I worked at Honeywell, I felt micromanaged from all levels, could not understand the ridiculous focus on census and internal metrics (vs. profitability and customer metrics), and felt that management was letting the walls and foundation of not just our plant but our company's manufacturing infrastructure, rot and crumble. We were all tenants in a public housing project waiting for eviction and told how lucky we were just to have a roof. I did not appreciate that. I strongly feel like the smaller, more nimble companies are going to eat Honeywell's lunch, because a company that treats people like disposable short-term assets (with things like pay cuts, furloughs, no pay differentiation based on performance) will not do well anywhere. It is a shame that Honeywell is fixated only on the number of Americans working at its plants (and hell bent on driving that number to zero). But I think they will find that Indians and Chinese who are treated like crap dont appreciate it either and will walk as well when they see an opening. The only sad thing is that these bright people will take Honeywell processes and technology to other companies overseas who will then use it to put even more pressure on American manufacturing by eroding whatever advantages we do have. It is happening already in China and India by Honeywell's own admission. All of Honeywell's and especially Aerospace's leadership should be ashamed for their arrogance and and blindness and what they are doing to our country. Honeywell could be a leader in investment in training and technology and in building back up the US manufacturing base, instead, they choose to lie to innocent people about the future and sell them out. Anyone can say they are investing in our future here, but if you want proof, don't listen to the talk coming from Phoenix and Morristown; look for the capital expenditures and new hiring. Been a long time since most Honeywell employees have seen activity in either of those areas. Good luck to all you guys still on the ship. Just make sure you jump before it sinks and sucks you down into unemployment. Thursday, January 7, 2010 Elmer Ambrose Sperry (400 patents), Henry Ford (over 160 patents), Steve Wozniak (Apple IIE Patent). I’m sure it’s safe to assume that neither one these people ever said they wanted to be businessmen when they grew up. They had talent knowledge and great ideas that eventually contributed to the economy and the quality of life for millions. These people became wealthy CEOs, but they earned it. Conversely, the only thing Diamond Dave ever invented was a new way to screw people who actually work for a living. Dave and the twenty Business majors underneath him are locusts-parasites that seek shelter in large well-established tech organizations that other people built where they can set up shop and begin the slow drain. Thursday, January 7, 2010 I agree. This is happening in large corporations like Honeywell, nationwide. Our country is being raped and pillaged by these greedy CEOs. Make that be our one bonding cry. "BUY AMERICAN!" and support your country, your family, your neighbors, your friends. ENOUGH! We have power in numbers. Thursday, January 7, 2010 I second that on BUYING American, and I have been trying as much as possible. You can find American made jeans, shoes etc. if you search the web. Wednesday, January 6, 2010 We NEED to buy ONLY American across the board. Tuesday, January 5, 2010 Just to add to the person who wrote they were handing in their notice first day back in January. Well done! I too left over a year ago and have looked back with no regrets as my life has changed dramatically for the good. I guess this is a message to all the put down, bullied and undervalued employees, that there is life outside this badly-run company. Instead of writing how pissed off you all are, take some action, put yourself out there and move out. The only way of bringing the CEO and the over-paid management to their knees is to ship out and leave them to drown in the shit pool they have created. Maybe there is a form of justice after all. To quote another infamous kill-or-be-killed company, 'Don't think, just do it' Read this article - tell us how many signs relate to Honeywell:
Saturday, January 2, 2010 Re: "Aren't some of these CEO's guilty of treason or at the very least a treasonous act?": It certainly seems that way. I would love it if just once someone would bring charges against one of these traitors so the damage they've done to the country where they claim "citizenship" would get some publicity. At minimum it might put in place some standards of conduct and shove a wrench into this "anything-goes" behavior that's deemed permissible under the banner of globalization. If India or China are good enough places to send US jobs, then they should also be good enough places for Cote to go live. Thursday, December 31, 2009 I am getting out of Honeywell :-) I am going to be handing in my notice the first day back after the new year. My new job pays more and has much better working conditions. A message to the people still left at Honeywell... Even though the job market is bad it is worthwhile to keep looking. Honeywell pays very poorly when compared to other places and the depression you are feeling right now goes away with a new job. I am going to take my engineering talents to another company, somewhere that does not see me as a liability whose costs are to be minimized. It's a pity because I leave behind several processes of which I am the only person qualified to do them. Oh well, that's Honeywells problem not mine. On a related note, I will be taking my retirement out as a lump sum, I do not trust Dave Cote and his "pals" enough to let it sit at their mercy until I retire. Thursday, December 31, 2009 Is there a way to forward this blog to Dave Cote's email at Honeywell? Wednesday, December 30, 2009 According to Wikipedia: In law, treason is the crime that covers some of the more serious acts of disloyalty to one's sovereign or nation. Oran's Dictionary of the Law (1983) defines treason as: "...[a]...citizen's actions to help a foreign government overthrow, make war against, or seriously injure the [parent nation]." In many nations, it is also often considered treason to attempt or conspire to overthrow the government, even if no foreign country is aided or involved by such an endeavour. Outside legal spheres, the word "traitor" may also be used to describe a person who betrays (or is accused of betraying) their own political party, nation, family, friends, ethnic group, team, religion, social class, or other group to which they may belong. Aren't some of these CEO's guilty of treason or at the very least a treasonous act? They are not only selling their employees out, but they are selling out their very nation. Sunday, December 27, 2009 MIS cries by disgruntled employees, pathetic management and a company that has not brought any differentiated products to market for over a decade now = a further slippery slide for HWL. The rise and fall of HWL automation will be studied in the MBA classrooms next decade as a lesson on how bringing great products to market and then simply milking the installed base with no repsect for the customer or adding value to their businesses is no way to run a business long term. Your competition, mainly the "blue guys" in Austin AKA Emerson Process management, will claim more market share when the financial crisis abates. HWL employees - you need to MAS (make a switch) and not simply cry MIS. Saturday, December 26, 2009 I have been reading this blog with interest over the past months and I cannot help but wonder if you have it all wrong. I see Cote and all of the other like minded CEO's as corporate terrorists. They are doing more damage to this great country than was ever done from 9-11 right up to present day. All 9-11 did was stir us and the Brits into invading Iraq and Afghanistan. I grant you that these two actions did the weapons industry good because we managed to clear out all of the old stock and get in some new stuff, but we have not solved any thing by invading those two countries, and as soon as we leave both governments will be over thrown and radicals will rule the entire region. Cote on the other hand has been effectively maneuvering a lot of the development and production out of the U.S.A into India and China, although this has not reflected badly on the company at this moment in time it will be interesting to see what happens to Honeywell when the growth stops, Cote squirms his way out and the company implodes. It would not surprise me to see China step in and buy the remnants thus acquiring all of the technical data they need to take another step up the technology ladder. I also read in a previous blog that Honeywell source code, generated in India is turning up in other companies software. It seems to me that Honeywell has lost internal control of the operations within these regions (Globalization will do that for you). With what China spent on the last Olympics they could buy a company like Honeywell out of chump change, especially when the share price falls through the floor, but all the general public can see is someone (Cote) living the American dream (some dream). Friday, December 25, 2009 Honeywell has what it calls it's 12 Honeywell behaviors which in theroy sounds good and should encourage moral & ethical behavior. But for some reason most if not all of Honeywell's managment team from the top down to the site level seem to believe that it is a tool which allows them to lie, cheat, and steal about their employees to other employees to get what they want i.e. more money in their pockets and or their own job security. The Human Resource segment at Honeywell is what you could call a joke, if not just plain old B.S.! There is nothing Human about it and they really do not provide any resource to Honeywell's employees but rather provide and feed a hostile work enviorment which at times drives employees to lose it emtionally and physically! One could make a case that Honeywell is the new age MAFIA corporate style! Friday, December 25, 2009 I'm soon to be an ex-Honeywell employee from the UK, thank God. Over here we were strongly encouraged to take up on Furlough and I do mean strongly encouraged. To be honest, me and my partner who also works at Honeywell. signed up for this; it cost us around £2000 but it was worth it - well that's what I thought anyway. Unfortunately, the site leader was and is still, corrupt to the level that the only word I can use to describe his is gluttony. For example, using a pool car at weekends to save his fuel costs, pocketing the money from scrap metals and packaging wastes, using company expenses system to pay for nights out by getting his managers to use their Amex cards, getting contractors to pay for servicing of his car and nights out, and the list goes on and on. Whils most of us have had to suffer the financial pain of supporting Honeywell in the endeavor to support other sectors of our organisation who are struggling. From an individual point of view, how fair is this? Wednesday, December 23, 2009 I have hated labor unions all my life, though I have worked with good people who were union employees and respect their beliefs. One thing I see across Aerospace now, is that ISC management policies and attitudes like the ones we have, are a driving force for people to unionize and give organizers the credibility to bring their campaigns into our plants. By this I mean :
Unions are not the answer. But if anyone in the Phoenix leadership circle reads this, reach out to the people in the field, the managers, the CSR's, and the engineers and let's work together to put Honeywell back on track. It is not easy, but lets take some first steps. We work in a culture where we know we can be terminated if we say ANYTHING that goes against what the Phoenix team decides or says in public, but that is not how progress is made, it is how insecure or scared leaders lead. Lets make it right and try to communicate in 2010 so we can gain back the ground we are losing, each and every day, with our employees and our customers. Wednesday, December 23, 2009 The idea of waging a campaign to "make it stop" is an idea worth pursuing. I have noticed around my facility that slips of paper bearing the letters "MIS" are starting to pop up on whiteboards, metrics boards and in more obscure places as well. Maybe if the idea takes off Dave and his minions will get the hint. Only time will tell. M I S = Make It Stop Sunday, December 20, 2009 Mr. Cote, What a wonderful CEO you are. Based on the earlier posting, AERO saved $60 Mil in 2008. You should be proud of this outstanding achievement in this horrible economic time. What a thinker you are. With that $60 million savings, you have managed to dump on the street, approx 1100 employees contributing to the foreclosure and unemployment rate in the very country that has allowed you to make millions. You are a great American. What is worse is that this is a conscious effort with little or no real effect on the stock price. Now that is an achievement; destroy the very workers you depend on with no effect on the stock. That $60 mil for a company which makes revenues in the billions has no real effect, what is the stock price? Did it jump $15 on the news? The answer is no. It went unnoticed, but managed to destroy lives of real people and contributed to the burden this country must face. In fact it managed to get you a reputation for taking that raise of 55%, created mistrust throughout the company, which will slowly destroy this company from the inside. This time it is different. Those left behind will not easily forget as they have done in the past. I have no loyalty for someone who would take such action when the country is hurting. In fact this goes not only for Honeywell, but for all the CEO’s and those VP’s that take the corporate jet each day to visit their paramours at the cost of a years salary for the average employee. Yes you deserve it, because you are all great contributors to this society we call America. Mr Cote, what would we do without such progressive thinkers as you to lead this countries economic power? China will never surpass the ingenuity of the American workers, which make your salary possible. Why not just lay off all of us and then you can report a bigger profit and take a bigger raise, and we will all just say nothing, because your are different and better then the rest of us. You are a great thinker and a great American... Saturday, December 19, 2009 The best way to tell if layoffs are coming after the holidays at Aerospace ISC is to look for the announcements sent out via email about new directors and VP's. As I struggle through my pay cut and look forward to the first (probably the first of many) furlough next year, I wonder where I missed the bus to the Phoenix Jobs Bank, where the same sorry set of characters plays musical chairs while our manufacturing infrastructure is gutted. This is shameful. Saturday, December 19, 2009 We were told in AERO that the salary reductions saved $60 million in 2008. Dave Cote received an increase of $30 million, I understand. Our CEO and CFO hightailed it out of Aerospace earlier this year (don't know why ,since THEIR pay was unaffected). Will someone tell me what we are sacraficing for? Or for who? Friday, December 18, 2009 A modern corporation must recognize that they serve the three people constituencies of stockholders, customers, and employees, and that none of these are more important than the other. Unfortunately, Neutron Jack earned fame and fortune by guiding GE for 20 years, while he ruthlessly gutted customers and employees in favor of stockholders. Allied Signal learned from GE, and has taken Honeywell down this same path. I now make a point to never buy anything with the GE name on it. I have found GE quality has been seriously degraded. At the same time this was occurring, GE bragged about their Six Sigma program. How can it be that Six Sigma, with all the best of intentions, results in reduced quality? Simple, because management is only driven to increase short-term profits and only views Six Sigma as another marketing tool! Honeywell used to be a great company to work for, and we made great products while serving customers. Unfortunately, those that are harvesting the company in order to prop up short-term profits will appear to shine as long as profits continue to rise. Only when customers and employees begin to rebel will any changes be made - and then it may be too late. Friday, December 18, 2009 Maybe management will begin to get the message when the letters MIS (Make It Stop) begin to appear on bulletin boards, in conference rooms, and break rooms across the company: The employees have finally had enough. Friday, December 18, 2009 - To the writer of MAKE IT STOP. The capitalistic model works very well; however it does not work when you have corruption. Which unfortunately is reaching a peak in this country. Just look around: the SEC is keeping its eyes closed and allowed the market to get out of control and crashed the world economy. Companies, especially Honeywell, told us that in order to save jobs we need to take a furlough - and then did the lay off anyway, reduced the 401 contributions and took away the health care from those about to retire. Well, why not? What are you going to do about it? The banks right now are doing what ever they want, like raising fees or making mistakes. Customer service is, "what are you going to do about it?" They know you can't re-mortgage, so you are stuck and they can do what ever they want. Just as Honeywell is able to cut your pay, your savings, lay people off and what the hell are you going to say about it? Absolutely nothing. Honeywell knows that, and they can do whatever they want. Let's just say that you know someone who was wrongfully fired just weeks before retirement. You can't take them to court; by the time the case is heard, you will first run out of money, or you will die. Besides you have seen the whistle-blower from NASA or BA; they have no job, just a few minutes on 20/20. What a protection law that is. Nobody can organize anymore, because there are no patriots left in this country. Although you have power in numbers, there will always be that one idiot that will step up thinking that he/she will finally be recognized and get a nice 9 block review, rather than standing up for a greater good. Honeywell is not the only company which knows this. They all use the 9-block, just look around. When ever cost of fuel goes up, airline ticket prices go up and they should, based on the model. But look at your 9-block model, it’s the same at GE and across the country, everyone received a 2% raise, evet the best performing divisions. Why can’t I go to Honeywell and ask for an increase in pay? Now lets look at the term performance raise. If the worst and best divisions get the same 2%, how is that based on performance? Or no matter what the COLA rate is, we all get 2-3% raise. Hmmmm, what a performance evaluation that is. If you fire all the B and C performers, somehow next year they find more. Must be the folks from the above paragraph. Just some food for thought - Cote takes a 55% pay increase, when you take a furlough. Yes, Make It Stop. Monday, December 14, 2009 The focus and emphasis in these blogs are on Honeywell; but Honywell isn't the only company practicing this grave exercise of betrayal of their countrymen under the popular buzz jargon of "globalization". There are many others. Beware, all you naive and puffed-up imbeciles hiding behind MBA's and titles. When Marx is finished and is satisfied with the damage you have inflicted on your countrymen, your ally, whom you didn't recognize, will dispose of you like a dog. Yes, in exchange for quick wealth, you were duped and used into dumping and disenfranchising your fellow American partners in labor. Monday, December 14, 2009 Anyone who thinks that the management will not take full advantage of the saving made by furloughs, lives in a dream world. No one cares about the day-to-day problems - they are just interested in the quarterly figures. Next year, just be prepared for 26 unpaid vacation days. But relax, they still expect you to work those 26 days. And, for the record, these furlough days were in place so as not to layoff your brothers and sisters, and yet there is going to be a mass culling taking place before our Christmas holiday begins. Honeywell's policy of savings-savings-savings does not apply to the people. They have to save themselves. Monday, December 14, 2009 First came the Toyota Production System (TPS). Then Honeywell shamelessly pirated the program and turned it into the Honeywell Operating System (HOS). Now we have the next logical step---MIS. Make It Stop. How wonderfully appropriate. I hope it catches on, because it truly is the only way to get upper management's attention and end these abusive tactics. Sunday, December 13, 2009 A small suggestion to all of those with Honeywell Aerospace who will be blessed with time off without pay the first part of January -- make it stop. Program managers and Project Control analysts are receiving direct messages from upper Aero management that missing milestones, hardware deliveries, or revenue targets due to the small inconvenience of this furlough is NOT ACCEPTABLE. The phone calls from numerous customers and and messages from Program Management indicating that schedule push-outs and deliverable targets are at risk are going unheeded. It is the opinion of management that we should all line up and work the extra time to assure that all January targets are met -- for free, of course, since paid overtime is not part of the Honeywell way. Well, MAKE IT STOP! Let the milestones slip, the revenue targets slide, the deliveries can be late. The only way to prevent another furlough in July is to put the pain in the only place Honeywell management seems to understand -- their bottom line. Make It Stop! Saturday, December 12, 2009 - Re: "and you reward our ideation by...SHIPPING OUR JOBS to China?!" The bonus! You forgot the BONUS. It's not about whether it makes sense or not. It's about someone making their bonus under the guise of saving money. And every single time this happens, it weakens US manufacturing and strengthens China's. Cote gets a fatter paycheck and the politicians look the other way. Great, ain't it? Friday, December 11, 2009 I am glad something like this weblog actually exists. I worked for Hand-Held Products from 2005 until we were acquired by Honeywell in 2007. We were a privatly owned company and did a majority of our manufacturing in upstate New York (yes I said NY...even with the taxes). I dont think we had the leanest operation ever, but we had some good stuff. Well, after Honeywell bought us, they came in and looked at our operations from an HOS perspective and really liked what they saw...especially a 3 line SMT operation that was value-stream aligned and scheduled 100% by Kanban. Next thing we know some "accounting" team says it will save millions to move to China.... Bye bye manufacturing in New York. Here is where the story will turn your stomach. I took a position in HOS as a Lead NA Specialist. The first worldwide knowledge-sharing event we login into shows the SMT operation from some Honeywell plant in Mexico... guess what...they had the exact same pull system design we had 2 years earlier. My boss had the brass to ask the knowledge sharing team where they got the idea and they said from NY plant that you are from. So let me get this straight. We do better than your sorry excuse for lean called HOS ever thought of doing, and you reward our ideation by...SHIPPING OUR JOBS to China?! I am glad to be out of there. 1 week removed and I am sleeping better already. Dave Cote couldn't manage a Taco Bell. Thursday, December 10, 2009 I see that the Brits lost their RGM this week, I wondered how long it would be before they realized that someone from turbo chargers couldn't run HBS. It makes a change to fire the head honcho just before Christmas. It is usually the foot soldiers that get dumped on. Lets hope the new RGM has some better ideas. Wednesday, December 9, 2009 There were layoffs today at UOP, Cote's favorite experiment in how to get the biggest bonus out of ruining a company. Nothing newsworthy (or more importantly reportable to the state), maybe 1% or less, unless you are one of the poor souls let go. The layoffs also left one of the best-selling UOP technologies with no domestic assets allocated to do design work. Zero. It would amuse me to see what the suits are telling the customers - and the bankers financing the projects - who pay a premium for premium technology when asked who is designing their units. If it is made in China, wouldn't an astute consumer expect a sticker or something somewhere to convey that? Might there also be an implied lower price to reflect the lower cost, or God forbid lower quality, of not using a domestic asset? Is UOP to become the WalMart of licensed refining technology? Probably not. Cote will hopefully be tarred and feathered before this happens to another UOP technology. Saturday, December 5, 2009 Having read the below comments, I cannot help but feel that it is time for many Honeywell employees to start looking around for a new job and use their experience and history to find a better job! I recently left due to the obsessive workaholic culture they have created and haven't regretting leaving one bit. My main concern are the amount of experienced knowledgeable people who have left after me which has created a vacuum within all organizations. It is easy to whinge about the Honeywell leadership and Dave Cote getting share options and bonuses but I think the main danger are the middle managers who appear to be totally ineffective, useless and protect their own jobs by treating their employees appallingly. The amount of middle management who appear untouched by headcount reductions and geographical relocations amazes me. (Aerospace's obsession with the Czech republic for example). They are masking the true impact on morale and the direct effect it has on the customers, whose opinion doesn't seem to matter anymore. The amount of pain that Honeywell has made on it's existing and past employees should be returned in one way or another as I find it disgusting that a company this size should be allowed to get away it. HR? Don't even go there! Saturday, December 5, 2009 That's just the sort of junk that Honeywell pulls, saying "Thank You" to everyone who participated in the 10% salary reduction. Did anyone have a choice? I certainly did not. Wednesday, December 2, 2009 Last week we received an email from HR that the furlough "savings" for whole EMEA region were 20M euro, and a "thank you" to all who participated. Peanuts compared to the +28M dollar compensation package of Diamond Dave for last year. Monday, November 23, 2009 - Re: the Nov. 21 post from Aerospace: It sounds like the demise has been spread equally. Sensing and Control is equally deficient. Had we been run so inefficiently before the Allied takeover, we would have been out of business long ago. Fortunately, new management under Cote arrived just in time to save us. For years we had practiced operational excellence, getting really good at what we do. Cote's "improvements" sent us into the Dark Ages. The loss of efficiency and productivity was staggering. Initially, heroic attempts were made to retain some semblance of the high standards we'd had before. But when it became obvious that upper management did not share the same standards, one by one most people decided the heck with it. Management plays their metric games. Temporarily focus on quality, a small improvement is noted, a few managers get promoted, but cost suffers. Temporarily focus on cost, a small improvement is noted, a few managers get bonuses, but inventory goes up. Focus on inventory, a small improvement is noted, the plant manager gets a promotion, but delivery gets worse. Focus on delivery, and quality diminishes. Management keeps the cycle going, filling their pockets with every cycle, cadres of Powerpoint junkies meticulously plot each imagined microscopic gain, management touts their successes, yet there's no real net improvement. Despite managment's lofty BS, we're still in the Dark Ages compared to where we were in the 90's. Meanwhile, production lines for highly complex products are jerked out and sent to China. It doesn't take a genius to imagine what happens there, but you'll never hear of those lines again. Those problems and performance issues are well hidden. Cote claims the gains on paper of such moves, and then buys a new company to do it all over again. He's turned Honeywell into a private piggy bank for himself and his upper echelon cohorts, while 0% and more layoffs are the standards for the workers. You're absolutely right: Polish the resume, and then get out of this sinking ship with your dignity intact. Then spread the word to help others avoid this quagmire of futility. Monday, November 23, 2009 I'm free! Alright, long time reader, 1st time poster, so I might as well say a few things. I was not a senior manager but was at a leadership position at a site level, so I know a lot about how corporate thinks, since I was involved in implementing the AOP for the site. Honeywell is obsessed with headcount. It's always about headcount. I've been in so many meetings where corporate tries to "trick" you out of headcount by saying you should be at a certain level, even though they told you to hire a few more people for special programs (not just HOS). You have to absorb all those unnecessary people you were told to hire. You get worn down when they try to chip at your headcount at every single meeting. It's never explicitly stated, but it's clear that Honeywell regards employees as it's biggest liability. You have to do everything to get rid of them. The longer they stay, the more benefits they earn and severance costs will only increase. You must get rid of employees as much as possible. Honeywell thinks and treats it's employees like parasites that must be removed at all costs. And who cares about customers, Honeywell fires salespeople and changes sales incentive mid year all the time! Just get your headcount down. I'm glad I got out of that crazy world! Sunday, November 22, 2009 That style of management is not exclusive to Aerospace. ACS and the other divisions have it too. Saturday, November 21, 2009 Honeywell Aerospace Senior Management views on a few things:
Saturday, November 21, 2009 How many people does it take to run a good company like Honeywell into the ground? Less and less every year. Saturday, November 21, 2009 I just erased a long ramble about the management mistakes Honeywell has made in just the last few weeks. But I thought better. I can just thow out a few actions and let them speak for themselves:
Friday, November 20, 2009 I want to thank all the contributors who have written here. It does helps some cope with the overwhelming weight of working for Honeywell. In fact it's apparent that Honeywell is not the only company, as evidenced by the other blogs here and all over the net. We see CEOs getting 55% pay increases and, as reported on the news just this week, an ever evident and disturbing trend developing where now the pension funds are now grossly under funded as the board members retire and receive $3-5 Million in retirement benefits, yearly. Yes yearly. This has now been identified as a trend, which means that more companies will be reported - thanks to the folks in Washington who are supposed to be watching the required pension minimums. Seems even the pensions are being ignored by Washington. This may be the next big bomb to drop on the economy. All this, while your job is moved off shore. This has happened because they make off with the money and leave the US workers with the bill. This now is much bigger than just losing your job. The greed in this country has been allowed to do what they want and now they want it all, even during retirement. Currently 2% of the population controls 98% of the money. How much more do they need? This is much bigger than anyone alone. We need to act now without delay. There is no way they can get away with if we can form a group to protect us and our children. There will be more on this in the very near future here and on Yahoo. This is very disturbing trend and who knows how deep this will go. Those of you who have jobs right now, that does not mean your retirement will be there, or your job. Once it's gone, it's gone, and there's nothing we can do. But, if we stop this now, maybe we can save some. Friday, November 20, 2009 Frankly, I was stunned by the comments concerning Honeywell on this Weblog. (Repressive communication practices forbid the utterance of such comments out loud.) Yes, there is something very wrong with this company. I too wonder how Dave Cote and his immediate staff can sleep at night. Yesterday evening, (November 19th), well after most of the U.S. employees had gone home, a smiling bodiless CEO level film clip was e-mailed across Honeywell Aerospace announcing a mandatory unpaid furlough for thousands of Honeywell employees the first week of January. The senior Aerospace workforce (many of whom had already experienced a mid-year 10% wage reduction)had been waiting for the other shoe to drop, and this was it. Furloughs and pay reductions were utilized in 2009 to "save jobs and cut cost across Aerospace". Bonuses and awards have been flowing into the pockets of the corporate executives for the cost savings initiatives since these initiative went into affect in late Q2. While the working level of the company struggles to make financial ends meet, the perts and bonuses at the executive level are presented to the finanicial news media as evidence of a strong and vibrant company. (One executive is flown home every Friday from the Aerospace Corporate offices in Phoenix to his home in California. The Gulfstream jet and crew reflect a $40k a week contractual obligation to the company. Let's consider that cost in light of the average yearly pay of an Aerospace production employee now faced with a loss of 6% of their wages going into the new year.) Aerospace Management is fixated with metrics. They have invested a ton of money developing tools to extract metrics from a business enterprise system purchased for millions of dollars which is unable to provide basic reporting functions. There are dozens of tools costing more millions of dollars now feeding and extracting data in an non-integrated fashion from the enterprise business system. Tons of metrics, reams of data, but little information that provides for an understanding of what is really happening in the business. From a production standpoint, the enterprise system has effectively brought multiple Aerospace sites to their knees. Factory production rates are down. Build and ship operating plans are based on targets set much lower than those which were achieved five years ago -- oh, but yes, the metrics say we are hitting our current production build and revenue targets. Hence, the enterprise system and organization structure are functioning as advertised. Overhead rates are staggering. This reflects a top-heavy management structure that has become completely disconnected from the day to day workings of the company. Culture of fear? You bet. A recent survey from Human Resources requested opinions regarding management -- however, the survey pointed out that corporate executives were "outside" the scope of the survey and one could only discuss one's immediate supervisor. It is not unusual to hear directors inform program managers that "they don't take action items". A company which was an industry leader in "teaming across all levels" has effectively disengaged upper management from managing projects. If there's a problem, it is the responsibility of the Program Managers at the project level to resolve it before it can affect the bottom line of the business. The organizational model lends itself to chaos. The divisions between operating functions is counterproductive. Program managers have no authority to direct resources. Resources are managed by unique operational units with the production and engineering functions on unique ends of the spectrum. Program management is responsible for engineering revenue and cost but has no control of the resources required to perform contractual work. Program management is responsible for maintaining production delivery schedules, but has no voice with regard to materials management, production flows, or hardware test schedules The military sector of Aerospace is a particular concern. It would behoove the government to "should cost" every cost type contract currently in progress within Honeywell Aerospace. It would also behoove the government to review aircraft hardware and software safety and reliability given the massive outsourcing to foreign countries of hardware design software engineering jobs within the company. There is plenty of low-hanging fruit to get government auditors engaged. The business enterprise labor charging system is suspect and would provide a good starting place for government review. Yes, the phrase "World Class" is a matter of perspective. Tuesday, November 17, 2009 Well, the management and board pay no attention to the employees; hopefully they will pay attention to the markets. However, I doubt if they will, they are all on some massive ego trip. Tuesday, November 17, 2009 If you had asked me 10 years ago if it was possible for a single person to gut the vitality out of a company the size of Honeywell, without hesitation I would have said: of course not. I thought there were enough checks and balances to prevent it. Likewise, 10 years ago, if a community announced a Honeywell facility was coming to their area, they had reason to celebrate because of the jobs it would bring. Reality turned out a lot different. Now, after 10 years of endless cuts in order to meet the numbers Cote promised Wall Street, the vitality is gone. Esprit de corps left a long time ago. And instead of looking forward to Honeywell's presence in a community, the reality is that, when Honeywell arrives it means that another company has been bought out and jobs (and tax revenues) will leave. I don't have an accounting background, but it looks to me like Cote turned the vitality of the company into bonuses for him and low paying jobs for inexperienced people in China. Monday, November 16, 2009 Thank you bloggers, you're helping me make it day-to-day, because I realize the problems are everywhere, not just at UOP. Pretty atrocious, isn't it? What we see is the "life" being sucked out of work. Fear is everywhere and the furloughs and benefit cuts are making it pretty near impossible to stay productive. The only thing that keeps me going is that as a relatively experienced workforce (WAY too well-educated and experienced for HON), there are still some brilliant and dedicated people here in our division. Not for long, I'm afraid. I notice that some of the financial sites are starting to pick up on the 100 % negative nature of this blog. For any of the management or board of HON - hey, wake up - how about that stock price? Do you think the culture has anything to do with that? Sunday, November 15, 2009 We received an email saying that the furloughs for our division are over. Unfortunately they said that they will continue to evaluate the need for furloughs in the future as sales have not improved. Saturday, November 14, 2009 I read the various company blogs on this site. The interesting pattern across companies is that, with the exception of Siemens, and especially Honeywell, most discussions are rather positive or at least competitive in discussing various technical virtues of their products. These are rather healthy discussions. Honeywell blogs, in particular, are laser focused on the company's persistant negative management style, the micro-management, Cote's culture of FEAR, weak Board of Directors, the constant closure of North American sites in favor of Asia, cuts in benefits and working hours - along with plunging employee morale. The complaint is the same across multiple Honeywell businesses. Wow, you people at Honeywell must have a real hard time getting up in the morning to go work in this environment. Your days must be full of stress and you must be afraid to leave work at the end of the day. Proof is that there have been ZERO positive blogs on Honeywell. So, as the expression goes, "where ther is smoke, there is fire" - must be true. Bless you all for your heroic efforts - inspite of your jobs being always under threat by your managers, that you are told that you are lucky to have a job, and that you have to work half the evening and not have time for your wife and kids..... This Thanksgiving and Christmas, pray for your Managers so that they will see the light. Pray that they will have a conversion. Then go home and hug your kids and be thankful that you still have a job... Because next year WILL be different! Friday, November 13, 2009 Welcome to Dave Cote's Culture of Fear. You can do all that, and do it well, but there will be no raise, no promotion, no job security. Your job will still be offshored. The only thing you've done is incrementally helped make Dave successful. Once you're gone, someone else will be there to Lay-It-On-The-Line for Dave until they, too, are gone. The only person who comes out ahead is good old Dave. What a racket. Friday, November 13, 2009 Management has short term vision. Employees are expected to be on the job at all days & hours of the week. Vacation time you are expected to be available to emails, conference calls or to even cut short and come back to work! The culture demands you be a workalholic. No personal life ever! No fun on the job, no perks, no frills. Critism is all they give to employees. Never, a word of encouragement or appreciation. Tuesday, November 10, 2009 As a former Honeywell employee, watching the evening news tonight it was said that the banks are up to it again. Not one credit-card company to date has put in place the new laws. Before the new laws come into effect Feb 2010, they are increasing interest rates on their best customers and demanding higher FICA scores for new applicants. I saw a video where a bank CEO was filmed at a party saying, "they just take it when we raise rates." Honeywell is not much better then the banks or any other large company. Nobody really owns the company and it's just a money tree for those in power. Watching Executive Vision on CNBC, (yes I have been watching a lot of TV) it became even more obvious that they are just people with no better education, vision and very little leadership skills. When asked, "What are you doing in your business, what strategy are you using to be more profitable for this tough market condition?", they all replied, "We needed to restructure, we needed to get waste out of our business, we negotiate our prices with our supplier and we want to retain our brand name (what ever that means)." So up to this point each CEO has been running inefficient businesses and never before talked with their supplier? Show me how smart you are and do it without cutting jobs and increase profits in this tough market. Earn your keep. It takes no brains to run a company when times are good. They just keep taking away the benefits our parents got. It seems our parents fought to get those benefits and we are letting the CEO take them away one at a time. How stupid do we need to be to take this? Enough is enough. Tuesday, November 10, 2009 Major player in the 'green industry' my foot. It's another gimmick to ensure Diamond Dave's bank account gets greener while he continues to offshore even more jobs. If anyone write letters to their politicians, they should protest the continued enrichment of CEO's at the expense of American jobs. These traitors need to be held accountable, and legislation is the only way. Sadly, personal responsibility and integrity aren't enough to do the job. Tuesday, November 10, 2009 - To the November 09, 2009 post: Last year Diamond Dave begged all of us in a corporate-wide email to write our congressmen asking them to pass the stimulus and bailout packages. Some of the people I worked with did end up writing to congress asking them to release the money for fear there might be another economic depression. Now I understand Honeywell is positioning itself to be a "major player" in the new green industry. Hmmmm, guess where the dollars for green industry will be coming from? By the way most of the people that I worked with, including the ones that wrote their congressmen, were recently laid off. When I was younger I remember someone telling me that a Recession is when your neighbor or coworker gets laid off - a Depression is when YOU get laid off. Seems rather poetic in a sick way. Monday, November 09, 2009 I remember early in Cote's tenure as CEO he had one major task on his plate: Resolve Honeywell's asbestos litigation problem. This was one of the many problems that came along with the Allied merger. He failed miserably, and ultimately came with his hat in his hands to the Honeywell employees begging them to write their politicians to pass legislation favorable to Honeywell. After Diamond Dave's reign of terror, I wonder how many of those letter-writing employees are left, and how many were terminated as a thank-you? Of the ones left, I wonder how many of them would write a similar letter for Dave today. For that matter, I wonder if any of today's employees would write letters for Dave. Or if he's smart enough to not even bother to ask. Saturday, November 7, 2009 I heard an interesting expression recently. It's "misbehaving MBAs". And herein is the problem. Just as in any endeavor, you have MBAs using their education for evil rather than good - in the same way as bombs are used constructively for contruction and roads; and destructively for IEDs. However, there is no one to take these misbehaving MBA's child-like mouth sucker away, or give them a time out like you would with a two year old having a fit, or an ocassional spanking. MBAs have no true professional association. They are not legally licensed for their conduct. There is no real professional body that governs their code of conduct and can regulate their behavor. They are freelance mercenaries of the business world with allegiance only to the almighty dollar - that is hired guns. The money makes them soulless and hollow! To the blogger that asked to stop bashing MBAs and go after titles: I'd say that if you are so proud of being an MBA, put it in your will to have MBA stamped after you name on your tombstone. Pre-write your obituary to show how many jobs you eliminated or outsourced. You are too much of a coward to do this. I've been to far too many funerals to know that these behavors don't have any impact on real people, and you will be forgotten very quickly. What matters is those that had a sense of true community and made a true contribution to their community - not because of money contributions, but because of the human heart. Friday, November 6, 2009 You are right about there being "different kinds of smart". There are $60,000 per year smart and $20,000 per year smart. Dave Cote is firing the $60,000 per year smart people and hiring the $20,000 per year smart people who are all overseas. There's a bunch of us engineers who are going to walk away once we find another position at another company. We are all actively looking for work elsewhere and swapping job leads. Once the economy picks up you will see an exodus of talent from Honeywell. Dave and his bunch are making decisions that mean more money now but will cripple the company in the future. He and his cronies will then leave the company and declare victory (Mission Accomplished) and leave the next poor CEO to try and pick up the pieces. I predict a long period of financial trouble starting while Dave is still CEO as he extracts the last dime from the dried up husk of the once proud company. Friday, November 6, 2009 Unfortunately, for US employees the longer this farce continues the more the question comes down to: Am I going to help Diamond Dave bank a bigger bonus this year, or am I going to act as a loyal American and walk away from this mess? Dave and his crew of micromanagers only have one game plan, and that is to offshore jobs to Bangalore and Nanjing as quickly as possible. Hand over your jobs to overseas locations, and then further waste US resources by providing endless support to help them be successful. It is incredible that this has been allowed to happen. But the politicians have bought the lie from the CEOs that companies must do this because: 1. They need to remain competitive, and 2. Overseas employees are better educated. The fact that CEOs, including Diamond Dave, also contribute heavily to political campaigns is not a coincidence. Remember Diamond Dave standing next to Beaming Barack earlier this year? But if Nanjing and Bangalore are such hotbeds of excellence, then why do projects undertaken by these groups require so much hand-holding from the US? Could it be because there are different kinds of smart? Cote goes to bed at night with dreams of fattening his paycheck by sending more jobs overseas. The worse he makes American employees look, the more justification he has, the faster the jobs leave, the richer he becomes. He gets to live large at our expense; layoffs, furloughs, pay cuts, reduced benefits, reduction or elimination of severance, etc. and the damage to communities that results. Cote and the board are managing the company for the benefit of a few at the expense of many. Institutional shareholders apparently give little thought, and typically vote their shares to support management. Employees are powerless - with the exception that we can just say -- NO MORE. And walk away. This has to stop. Thursday, November 5, 2009 Well I just looked at my "furlough" paycheck and it raises a question for Dave and his lackeys, ... How the hell do you sleep at night? As an employee and, more importantly in this case, a stock holder, I have to say that Dave and the Board have got to go. Fire the bastards. Wednesday, November 4, 2009 I agree in principle with those who object to painting all MBAs with a broad brush. However..... I've had experience with these whiz-kids also. The usual scenario is that they show up out of nowhere to help "fix" so-called financially troubled product lines or locations. Typically they've been given God-like authority, and begin to order changes without bothering to learn the facts surrounding the existing situation. Trying to apply common sense and reason with them is futile. Apparently their assignment is to shake things up, and this they do with great gusto. And then they leave, apparently successful -- with a notch on their calculators -- headed to "fix" something else. Except the fix wasn't real, or it wasn't permanent. For example, they'll focus on lowest possible part cost, and indeed, will find lower cost parts. Great cost savings. Except quality and delivery go to hell. But they notch a 'job well done' while those left behind try to clean up the mess they left. Frankly, my impression of a lot of these folks is that they are technical wannabees who couldn't cut it in the technical world. I'm trying to keep an open mind. I hope somewhere there are MBA's that have their acts together, and someday I'd like to work with them on a job, just to see the difference. Wednesday, November 4, 2009 People keep referring to MBAs as though "MBA" was the job title. Stop it. Focus your angst at the position, not the pedigree. Tuesday, November 3, 2009 Here is the problem with MBAs at Honeywell. I know that there is a "boiler room" type of these in Phoenix, trying to figure out strategies on how to squeeze & close sites. The problem is that it is a "boiler room". They are of like mind and like purpose, where dissension is probably questioned. Because of the high centralization in Honeywell (like in the Aerospace Group), these individuals never personally feel the consequences of their recommendations. There is a new regulatory wave coming over America on executive compensation. There should also be a new wave for MBAs. Their employment contract should also bind them that after they implement their decisions, they should be knocked down two levels for 3 years to experience the consequences of their decisions. This is the main problem. MBAs never personally feel (in their families) the consequences of their decisions. I know this to be true because I've been on many Honeywell strategic planning groups. In these sessions, what happens to individual employees is never discussed. When the topic comes up, it's always deferred to HR an a nuisance detail for them to take care of - and we move on! I agree that Honeywell is a large company and can be hard to manage. All the more reason to bust up the company into smaller pieces. It will create far more innovation that Diamond Cote can muster up in in his Town Hall meetings and award programs - which few people attend at the site level. The proof that Cote is ineffective in this is the poor stock price. There are too many centralized Corporate layers that really reduces effective decision making and productivity - like spending half of your day preparing metrics and the other half day explaining them - (personal experience). Tuesday, November 3, 2009 Honeywell is a Jekyll-and-Hyde company. For most of us, our work is about products and services. We assume Dave Cote's should be, also. Guess again. His work is offshoring *our* jobs. What the hell kind of a business is that? And by making us look inefficient (think of the time wasted on HOS, Six Sigma, etc.) the more justification he has. What a racket. Tuesday, November 3, 2009 We will stop bashing MBA's when they stop bashing us. Having a degree of higher learning is not a bad thing; it is when this piece of paper is used as a spring board to total hell that we have a problem. If, as you say, it helps with "better understand the basis for the decisions that are being made" then why has it not helped people like Dave Cote? Everyone I know that has a position of upper management in the world of Wall Street, carries and flaunts their MBA. And yet, the American economy is spinning down the vortex to hell. I know a lot of MBAs who are actually smart, but they use this for the betterment of mankind. As soon as you're given a position of money, you tend to lose the information you have learnt and proceed to act on greed. Greed has never been known to produce a design of longevity. When you look at the CEOs who have MBAs, and the fall of stock shares linked to these CEOs, you can only come to one conclusion. Diamond Dave and friends need to learn that history has a bad habit of repeating itself and this is our Roman Empire. Tuesday, November 3, 2009 I agree on the MBA bashing thing, if anything an MBA education allows me to see MORE poor decisions being made in even MORE areas of the business and makes me angrier as our upper management in AERO ignores fundamentals of keeping a company healthy long term- things like talent management, R&D, customer relationships, and developing manufacturing capability using labor cost as one criteria, not the only criteria. The managers playing musical chairs in Phoenix are completely detached from the reality that our customers and our plants see and should get involved before our already hollow brand name becomes worthless. And by the way, there were greedy self serving idiots in business school, so there are plenty of those running around with MBA's to be sure, we just need to make sure we all understand how badly some of them are hurting our future at Honeywell. Tuesday, November 3, 2009 How about we stop the silly MBA bashing. They are not all like Diamond Dave. I am a technical employee, but have 2 business grad degrees (including the MBA). I pursued these degrees so that I could better understand the basis for the decisions that are being made. I felt like stupid decisions were being made with little knowledge or skill, and I wanted to know why and maybe jump in the mix to do something about it. There are a lot of great classes to help you understand the mechanics of business and strategy. I suggest those who bash the MBA and claim victim-status while decrying *anyone* who pursues advanced business degrees, try it for themselves and stop the incessant victim-whining. Add some skills and take over some of the management jobs if you really think you can stomach it. MBA!=The devil's seed. With all that said - I have to completely agree that the leadership has to go! They are sacrificing an entire company for next quarter's results. And since the company is so large and covers so many communities, they are wrecking communities and families all for the SHORT TERM QUARTERLY RESULTS! Honeywell is not much different from other companies that go whoring for the Wall Street analysts fickle and uneducated approval. Honeywell touts the Hometown Solutions as part of it's community improvement initiatives.... screw that. How about you look down the road and beyond your golden parachute and figure out how to bring innovation back while giving a rat's ass about the American worker... or the country for that matter! Honeywell is traitorous in how it sends high-tech (and high-tech knowlege/jobs) to countries who HATE the US. Cote should be tried as a spy. Cut the BS (i.e. HOS and watered down Six Sigma). TREMENDOUS (I can not emphasize the magnitude of this) amounts of waste are found there - chop heads within upper and middle management. Now. For crap's sake, Aerospace spends most of its time reorganizing the same idiots into different formations - my opinion is that's how management hides from the axe. It pisses off the customers and messes with productivity. Set a target ratio of direct:indirect labor and cut your indirect, starting at the top. Learn to communicate outside of PowerPoint and funny words that make you sound smart and sophisticated. You sound like a jackass to this MBA. Monday, November 2, 2009 I'm looking here and other places on the web. Common theme on Honeywell is Cote's excessive compensation package relative to poor stock performance. Cote is looking so greedy. The greed is looking so overwhelming that, even if he launches any altuistic initiative, there will be questions as to his motives. From what I see, when the Devil hands out hus Continuous Improvement Greed Awards, Cote will be sure to win - right behind Madoff, and others. During Cote's many years, the stock price has gone down year after year and it has underperformed the S&P 500 since 2002. So, why are the Board of LapDog Directors keeping this weak performer? Honeywell adopted the GE policy of firing the bottom 10% of performers. Why is Cote still there? Monday, November 2, 2009 Common sense doesn't play a part in Dave Cote's world, the only thing that matters is Dave Cote. He doesn't care how many people he puts out of work as long as his total compensation package keeps going up. This is where the board of directors is as much to blame as Dave. The board could hold him accountable but they don't; they could replace him but they don't; they could reduce his compensation but they don't. Have you ever wondered why they don't do those things? Maybe there's a connection between all of them? Monday, November 2, 2009 It just goes to show that people like Dave have turned an MBA into a worthless piece of paper. I have no idea what BS is taught in MBA class, but common sense and logic is not on the agenda. I will explain simple logic so that even an MBA will understand:
But like I said, Dave Cote would not know common sense if it smacked him on the head. And if you are making notes, MBA classes are packed with lots of Daves. Monday, November 2, 2009 So how do we, the people, stop these global corporations from eventually assimilating and offshoring every manufacturing job in the US? It seems that as soon as a small company develops a unique or exceptional product, they eventually get assimilated by the Borg. Then manufacturing is sent to China, more people end up without jobs, and the CEO's get richer. Where does it stop? Why is this OK? Monday, November 2, 2009 Great article on the activities of the former AERO CEO, who cut all our pay before leaving to go pillage another company. Guy fails Dave Cote's acid test (probably hung on to too many American manufacturing employees), so he gets run out along with the CFO this summer, but no worries, he is back to his old tricks at First Solar. Sunday, November 1, 2009 Honestly, in reading all the blogs, you have to believe that Cote is the top "Hitler of Honeywell"... in that Cote is the top "Killer of USA jobs". So there are no apologies here. You look at Aerospace and S&C - and you see a cosistant pattern. There is a phrase: "If you live by the sword, you die by the sword". The stock price is the ultimate vote. Honeywell's stock has been doing crap. I'll bet that is Cote resigns, the stock price will go up. Time for the old tired horse to leave for some fresh new and visonary blood. tried of the same old business garbage from Cote that no young peoson believes. Sunday, November 1, 2009 NW Illinois loses presssure transducer jobs to China - not because China has demonstrated any particular ability to build this complex product, but only because Cote perceives he can save a penny. Technology and processes developed by years of effort by western engineers is again handed to the Chinese on a silver platter. But after all the moving and support costs are considered long-term, will it truly be cheaper? Oh, that's right: By the time the true cost is known, Cote will be gone. In the local newspaper the Honeywell mouthpiece talks about how much Honeywell values its employees. Apparently only if the employees happen to be Chinese or possibly Indian. Actions speak louder than words -- Honeywell's US employess are nothing but an expendable asset to be sacrificed in Cote's relentless pursuit of glory. Sunday, November 1, 2009 The Los Angeles times has an interesting article on how upset the Army is with Honeywell over its "saving energy building retrofit" contract. Along with the story about Quincy this does not look good for Honeywell. How many times do you have to mess the government around before you are taken off their vendors list? Saturday, October 31, 2009 NWIL More jobs being outsourced to Communist China. The Honeywell S&C idiocy continues.... Sunday, October 25, 2009 When I saw the post about the source code my first thought was "What can I do about it?". I figured out that I had 3 options. The first option is to tell my boss who would say "That's nice but we cannot do anything about it". The second option is to find who deals with the control software and tell them but then I would get chewed out for not going through the chain of command. The third option was to ignore it and go back to playing games, surfing the internet or looking for another job while Honeywell pays me. I chose the third option because, in the end, nothing I do will change the way Honeywell management operates. It's sort of like re-arranging deckchairs on the Titanic, nothing I do can alter the course of the ship or do anything to raise my salary. Sunday, October 25, 2009 Source code leaking? This should surprise no one. We repeatedly stressed to management our concerns about the security of proprietary code if projects were outsourced to India and China. Their response: It will be OK, trust us. Then the next round of layoffs eliminated more stateside programmers. When management is unconcerned, why should anyone else care? It does absolutely no good. Thursday, October 22, 2009 Honeywell you have a problem - your software source code is leaking. Until recently I was working for a small engineering consultancy, they were outsourcing software development to a small "specialist" company in Bangalore. The last batch of (C) source code I saw (PID control module and OPC server) still contained the Honeywell comments and change log. Thursday, October 22, 2009 Unfortunately, Dave Cote is hiding behind the grading curve. In an economy where used car salesmen with Ivy League degrees can gamble other peoples money, lose it and expect everyone else to pay it back, and then expect and receive a lottery scale bonus, Dave in contrast, looks like a decent hard working CEO who is just trying run an honest business. Honeywell execs are acutely aware of this, and they will push it as far as they possibly can. When, or should I say if, they ever garner the attention they so richly deserve, they will rationalize it in yet another eloquently worded press release. Something to the effect of "at least we weren't as bad as those guys". Thursday, October 22, 2009 - To the Oct. 20 poster: Yes, it is amazing. It's as if someone told the CEO's that outsourcing was THE ANSWER. And from then on they approached outsourcing as if it were a free lunch, not smart enough to realize that nothing is free. All they did is replace a condition of known issues with one of unknown issues. I would estimate that 3/4 of the technical experience at Honeywell is gone, not to mention the talent pool at other positions. Absolutely nothing functions as well as it used to. Individual empowerment is non-existent. Micromanagement is extreme, and fear and paranoia are rampant. Just when you begin to think that everything possible in the way of employee "satisfiers" have been removed, management comes up with something else. Every day is slightly worse than the day before. Upper managment seems to be the only segment of Honeywell (at least in the US) that is prospering, and the disparity between then and the rank and file employee is growing rapidly. It is patently obvious that they have gorged at the company trough only to enrich themselves at the expense of the vitality of the company. I hope that one day there will be an accounting, but I'm not holding my breath. Tuesday, October 20, 2009 It is amazing the similarities that I see from this discussion and the discussion we had at Hewlett-Packard in 2000. A history major (Carly Fiorina) was running HP, the gem of the Silicon Valley. She was being talked about in the same fashion as David Cote. I had nearly 20 years at HP at the time. Fiorina started outsourcing, and trying to buy her way out of bad decisions to the tune of $19B in two or three different deals. The discussions were almost identical to these about Cote. Fiorina cooked the books, and within 18 months after she took the job the street was saying her bloom was off the rose. Then she laid off the first 6000, saying there were 6000 new hires when there was a hiring freeze on. Guess what? The 6000 laid off were 76% long time employees with more than 15 years service, over 40, making over $75k/year, not the 6000 new hires. This was the first layoff in the company's 60 year history. I was in the first 6000. Then she spent $19B for Compaq, a company in so much trouble that they were actually only weeks away from going under. That was one week after she cut the 6000. 9 months later another 15000 were cut, then 6 months later another 8000. All told, there were nearly 56,000 cut from both companies. The true value of the deal was a little over $2B, not the $19B she spent to buy it. It took 5 years, but she was fired in disgrace and has not worked since. Sometimes it takes a while, and it is painful for everyone involved, but they do get it in the end. I remember I was driving down the road, when a report aired on NPR, saying Fiorina had been fired. I was so overwhelmed, the only thing I could do was scream at the top of my lungs, and shake my fists in the air. I had to stop the car because I began to cry uncontrollably. After that it felt as if a huge weight had been lifted from me. But this conversation sounds a lot like those times. Just remember, life is not lived at a job. You are, even though you aren't Honeywell. Monday, October 19, 2009 It seems that even NASA is fed up with Honeywell. They received a 70% award fee for the last 9 months on the NENS contract. Monday, October 19, 2009 Do a Google search for "Quincy" and "Honeywell" to see a very interesting news report. This is the face of Honeywell today. Saturday, October 17, 2009 If everything goes the way Dave Cote/Allied would like it to, there will only be a few locations left open in the United States, a few multi-office suites. Some offices serving as design and engineering houses and the rest will be inhabited by executive types like Dave and their paper-pushing lackeys (Six Sigma Loyalists) whose job it will be to watch over remote operations from afar. As the academic infrastructures of various LCRs throughout the world develop, eventually they will be able to produce their own engineering and design talent. Provided they will be willing to work for a fraction of their U.S. competitors salary (and they will be), Allied will likely outsource the remaining US engineering segment to them as well. At that point the process will be complete, Honeywell will exist in the U.S. on paper only - that is as long as there is still an advantage to be had for a corporation having U.S. citizenship. No one says Dave Cote/Allied will necessarily get this far, but this is likely what they have in mind. Friday, October 16, 2009 I agree with the Oct. 15 blogger. Allied was a company with serious legal and environmental problems that seriously needed to clean up its act. Muddying old Honeywell's reputation with Allied was, in my opinion, a mistake, and nothing but a transparent attempt to leave the "Allied" stigma behind in favor of a name with a better image. Dave Cote is nothing but a one-act play, repeated endlessly. He's never produced anything original; just warmed-over Jack Welch BS. When there are so many enlightened CEO's out there who truly earn their money, it is puzzling to me why the board of directors continues to settle for Cote's stunning mediocrity. Unfortunately, if/when they finally wake up, you can be sure Cote will receive the mother of all golden parachutes. You have to wonder how many more people will lose their jobs to pay for it. Thursday, October 15, 2009 Whoa! Wait a minute - Allied Signal took over Honeywell and everything moved to Morristown. They just kept the Honeywell name because it was well known. That Allied Signal culture was bad fromn day 1. Honeywell was a really good company to work for until the takeover. Wednesday, October 14, 2009 Cote has to go. He's done nothing for the stock price, and blaming others for the poor stock performance is really unbecoming of a CEO. You would expect this excuse-giving at the lower ranks. Cote has also hollowed out American facilities with all the outsourcing - something that he is directly responsible for. When I see the folks around Cote, all I see is smiling and nodding heads - there can't be any opposition at the Board of Directors level. A lot of companies are going through a leadership clean-sweep during this economic crisis. I would feel more comfortable if Honeywell did a clean sweep also. Cote has been in place and responsible for the stock-price falling from $60 to $30. He has little or no responsibility for any upside. Even the dividend payments are relatively poor. You can actually do much better in dividends and growth potential elsewhere. Also, Cote has never done an independently-conducted employee satisfaction survey. That left with Bosidy. These little thing reflect on the poor opinion/value he has of employeees. This poor opinion of employees especially permeates throughout Aerospace leadership. Wednesday, October 14, 2009 It's sad but true; Dave Cote and his cohorts are raising profit margins in the short-term, but sacrificing the long term future of the company to do it. Dave will bail out as the tide turns, and it will be left to a real leader to pick up the pieces. It is painfully obvious, now that Dave Cote rode the coat-tails of the economic boom in the last decade. Now that times are tough and we need real leadership, we find that he is an empty shell, spouting the same worn out phrases he has been using for a decade. Now he stands up at the all employee meetings and talks to empty rooms, giving phrases full of hot air that are no longer relevant, desirable or useful. He is hanging on and waiting for the stock price to go up so that he can say what a wonderful leader he is. He has blamed the stock-price going from 60 to 30 as being a function of the general economic downturn. When the stock price goes up by 5 cents he will say to the world "Look what I did". As an industrial leader Dave Cote is a failure, I would not trust him to run a lemonade stand. The rest of his "leadership team" are just as bad too; no new ideas, nothing but spouting the same corporate phrases that Dave does. They are all sucking the company dry with their massive compensation packages. The 10% or more cut in pay we all took this year did not affect Dave or his lackeys. In fact, he kept his 55% raise. Wednesday, October 14, 2009 Well, at UOP, I can only reiterate that our company has changed MUCH for the worse. Even the CEO, Carlos Cabrera decided to call it quits earlier this year. No need to repeat the details of numerous other blogs. However, there is one curious item, and probably the only good thing as far as I am concerned: Honeywell loves patents and instituted a relatively good monetary incentive program (UOP basically for years gave nothing, then decided to have a nice dinner for 1, 5, 10 patents, etc.) It is probably kind of token, once taxes etc. are taken out. This bonus doesn't start to compensate for the loss of pay in terms of furloughs, cut in 401K match, loss of retiree medical insurance. That being said, I tend to agree with the earlier comment that when it comes time to sell your division off, the IP gets assigned some value. And you're quite right, that is where this management style seems to lead in the end. Wednesday, October 14, 2009 As a Jack Welch fan, Dave Cote and the 10 or 25 people working just under him are committed to outsourcing. Hiding behind code phrases like "competing in global markets" and "doing what is best for the stockholder" have allowed people like Cote to create profit margins and bonuses without having to understand, participate, or contribute to the workings of these types of organizations. Dave Cote, and the legions of MBAs that hope to be like him someday, don't even have an intellectual curiosity about what science and engineering can do. To them it is a daily obstacle, and they resent having to interface with technical types. Why bother trying to understand the "widget" or much less, trying to imagine what the nextgen widget will be, when you can just cannibalize the process and the people who created the widget? I believe that Cote will continue to outsource Honeywell. If these divisions fail to perform, Cote will opt to sell them for their IP. There are plenty of organizations that would like to buy Honeywell patents for cheap. Eventually he will hit the eject button, leaving behind a has-been brand name. Wednesday, October 14, 2009 I blogged earlier, and should have added: The old AlliedSignal lost a hold on the way we did business. At that point, Honeywell took over and ruined the way we did business. Not sure exactly who or where they came from. I am from the United days, all the way to the Honeywell days. Honeywell has been a real dissapointment to almost all of its employees, except for maybe a few new to Honeywell. It is felt not as the new way, but a company to be proud to work for. Before we became Honeywell, we were happy. This was a dramatic change that was not part of the way we had been used to for so many years. Wednesday, October 14, 2009 I worked for Sundstrand, AlliedSignal, and right before that Honeywell when AlliedSignal took over. This whole take over is not what any of the previous-to-becoming Honeywell ever was. Anyone I talk to abosolutely has seen changes that we never had before. All the way up to the Founder, and the ground Prox Product VP. Since Honeywell, everyone thinks Honeywell has been the problem as EVERYTHING CHANGED FOR THE WORSE. We have seen 90% or more change for the absolute worse. It used to be a company AlliedSignal people really liked. Now it is like micro-management all the way, with NO ONE liking it. We are like robots, just doing our jobs to get paid, with no enjoyment or feeling of satisfaction on how well we do. Like working at a Library. Everything changed so much in every way shape and form. Everyone that has been here for years has never seen such a sad place to work. Since Honeywell, it has truly not been a place where people are happy. We only just do our jobs, and are not at all proud to be Honeywell. Most everyone feels this way; 100% do not like it. Especially, the ones who have been here for a long time. The leaders we had, are not the ones we have now; that changed shortly after we became Honeywell. Tuesday, October 13, 2009 Gee, the shareholders must be out for Cote's gut. With all the trouble that GE has been through, GE shares have outperformed Honeywell on a percentage comparison basis. Honeywell shares have basically been stuck in the $30-$40 range for the majority of Cote's reign. Also, almost a decade for a CEO is an awful long time - too long for things to smell under the covers. I like it when CEO's are wacked every 3-4 years. It keeps the dung pile fresh! Monday, October 12, 2009 Interesting news from JimPinto's eNews No. 273 - 12 October 2009 For sale:
(Click)- GE will emerge as next big automation player
Monday, October 12, 2009 It is apparent that the commitment to excellence that was part of the old Honeywell culture no longer exists within the new Honeywell. Old Honeywell emphasized customer satisfaction, quality products, quality processes, and retention of quality employees. New Honeywell emphasizes acquisition of new companies ->offshoring production-> slash and burn headcount reduction -> and minimal attention to customer satisfaction and product quality. Sure customers complain. Sure they take their business elsewhere. But by then Honeywell has harvested the low-hanging fruit and moved on. Note that employee satisfaction isn't even a blip on the radar. Repeat the above cycle with more acquisitions as necessary to 'make the numbers'. As long as a supply of candidates for takeovers continues to exist, Honeywell will continue to rape and pillage its way through formerly high quality companies. Employees are nothing but cannon fodder to be swept aside on Dave's march to the bank. The only thing that will interrupt this cycle is when the employees of newly acquired companies immediately walk out the door in protest, before they are coerced into participating in the offshoring process, thereby causing a financial setback. Nothing else will get either Cote's or the BOD's attention. Unfortunately, such action runs counter to human nature, a fact which Cote exploits to the extreme. Monday, October 12, 2009 I worked for Honeywell IAC in service for over 33 years and am now retired. Wow,was it a great company when I started. I can't count the additional hours I worked off the clock, to get my customers back on line. And the rest of the techs in my area did the same. Right around the 20-year mark (Bonsignore ) things started changing. It became more difficult to give my customers the service time they deserved. After the Allied Signal takeover, everything really went to hell. We would have all these meetings about customer satisfaction, and then the wheels would stifle you in their quest for that monthly P&L quota they had to meet. It really became a joke after awhile. I finally had enough and retired. I now work part-time for a small automation service company, and have 90% of my old contracts. My customers love it because now I'm there for them any time they want and I don't have to deal with all the BS from the bosses. If I'd known things could have been this good, I would have have retired 10 years earlier. Sunday, October 11, 2009 I think that the HR VP in Aerospace who told us all on a conference call that people were 20:1 in favor of our 10% pay cut, should be drug tested. Friday, October 9, 2009 HOS (honeywell operating system) is a total waste of resources and time. They say it is intended to provide accountability to the process, but all it really doing is bogging down the employee with check lists upon check list upon check list. HOS is nothing but micro management to the hilt. It sucks from an hourly employee's point of view. Friday, October 9, 2009 Yes to the last entry! When Honeywell (Allied) took over our pulp and paper products (CD actuators) they destroyed our good name, our sales plummeted, and our employee headcount is half what it was. Friday, October 9, 2009 I used to consider that Honeywell was a good reliable brand name - for heating controls, refinery control systems etc. However, my company was taken over by them about 2 years ago, and I now have a completely different view of the brand. One to be actively avoided. I now have the view that most products are probably made by low paid third world staff, fronted by disillusioned staff in the West. Do old Honeywell staff (ie people in Honeywell before the take over by Allied Signal) feel the same? Did Allied Signal steal the good name? Wednesday, October 7, 2009 Everyone should take a look at the websites of our competitors- note that many other Aerospace firms are hiring instead of working to idiotic "census" targets and telling people they are "lucky to even be here"- things that do nothing for profitability or morale and only protect poor performers from their managers becuase they know they will not get a replacement if someone is managed out of the company. All employees get email messages every week about new directors and VP's at AERO headquarters, so maybe the headcount restrictions are only OUTSIDE Phoenix and these big cheeses are not counted in the "census". Regardless, given the fact that some of our competitors are hiring again, the good employees can leave, but the poor performers can stay becuase their managers know if they are fired there will be no replacement. Funny thing though, our Aerospace CEO left the company after cutting all our pay, but they backfilled that job right away. Not what I would have thought in a company that has more Vice Presidents and Directors than machinists and welders but hey, what do I know after 10 years with the company? Plus the "incentives" for early retirement chased out a lot of our legacy knowledge and experience. And to top it off with pay reductions and cuts in our 401K that senior management does not share while our CEO Dave Cote rakes in millions of dollars! Wow, we are just getting better over time with this strategy and really building our talent pool now! Or GE's talent pool I should say. But I guess it does not matter because the people whose jobs are actually part of Honeywell's future plans probably blog only in Hindi, Bengali, Spanish, or Chinese. Thursday, October 1, 2009 What Honeywell wants is cheap, expendable labor. Yes they do... It is called outsourcing: Mexicali, Indonesia Malaysia, Tianjin, India and many more in the works. Just think how much money they are saving, so Dave Cote's bonus will be more than last year ($19 million). I can't wait to see what Santa brings him this year. Thursday, October 1, 2009 I agree with several blogs here. I have worked for several different companies during my career, big and small, and I have to say that Honeywell is the worst. We are a Fortune-100 company that spends less on its employees than most cash-strapped startups. I have never been so badly treated by my employer than I have with Honeywell. Talk about bait-and-switch; the HR department are masters of promising one thing and delivering another. The management here are clueless and pathetic, sucking up to their bosses because they know they will be fired if they say something that is not part of the company line. The pay raises are a joke - somewhere between 0% and 3% and there are no bonuses for the workers. Honeywell lies to its employees, takes away what they promised to give and then expects the employees to believe all of the junk that management spews out at the quarterly meetings. I do not have a career at Honeywell, I have a job. I will be moving on the moment I can find a position at another company. Honeywell doesn't want talented people, they cost too much and the leadership team (who couldn't lead their way to the bathroom) might have to sacrifice something in order to keep them. What Honeywell wants is cheap, expendable labor. There is no planning for the future. Nothing is done that does not show a profit within the same quarter. Right now the company is living off its reputation and its existing products. It is also living off the employees 10% cut in pay to show an artificial amount of spare cash for the investors. Once they run out, the death spiral will begin, the top execs will take their millions and leave, and everybody else will be hoping that we can get someone who knows how to run a company instead of someone who only knows how to suck a company dry. Wednesday, September 30, 2009 Honeywell is a ROTTEN company to work for anymore. I feel sorry for the employees, and even more for their customers. Management could care less for the customers. If Honeywell folds tomorrow, management is set with their pensions, stock options, 401k’s, etc. Every month we have dissatisfied customers come to our facility to see why we are not performing and living up to our commitment. Our site managers will have meetings to come up with an action plan, and tell them whatever, while they are here. When the customer leaves, management goes back to their spreadsheet and reports to justify why they are the best thing that ever happened to this company. Then they prepare for the next customer to call and complain. Like Dave Cote, they blame a downturn in the economy to justify why they do what they do! Tuesday, September 29, 2009 - To the "I spent a year training technicians to take our aerospace jobs": I'll bet the reality as to why you and your colleagues stayed has more to do with being outright threatened with a loss of your severence pay and benefits if you did not cooperate. So, you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. But it is crafted by Honeywell lawyers. The shocker is that the HR folks are very open on these threats. Honeywell calls this "management" - a form of making you do what you really do not want to do in the first place. Monday, September 28, 2009 My colleagues and I spent a year training technicians to take our aerospace jobs to Asia. It was very hard to do, but we many of us couldn't see leaving Honeywell at the time. We were all laid off in June. The few that kept their jobs were the game players: Those who spent their entire day emailing colorful excel spread-sheets to the bosses describing everything they did to support the company while doing nothing to contribute to the project that paid the bills; those that played fellow employees against each other in order to create chaos and mistrust; and those that managed to make friends with the person that drew up the "let-go-list" - most likely the boss. It seems that if you work hard in America these days, you get screwed in return. At my next job, if I hear the word transition, I'm heading for the door. Tuesday, September 22, 2009 I am an engineer by training. I used to work as an engineer. Today, Honeywell treats me like an errand boy. The way things used to work, there was trust between engineering and management. Management would outline project goals -- cost, quality, and schedule -- and ask engineering to review. Engineering would adjust the variables if needed, and re-run it by management. Iterate again if needed, then proceed. 99% of the time this produced results that met or exceeded the goals. Not today. Today, there is no trust, only micromanagement. Management establishes the project goals mostly without input from engineering, and especially as regards costs. Engineering is given a budget with no opportunity for input. Without exception, the budget has been insufficient to support the quality and schedule requirements, but there is no negotiation. This approach has resulted in a continuous string of project failures. Rather than adequately fund the project in the beginning, management prefers to underfund, believe the illusion, and then pour resources towards the job once it becomes a crisis. This has led to missed schedules, missed quality objectives, missed revenue streams, and ultimately a blown budget and employee layoffs. Had but a single failure like this occured on my watch in the past, it would be mentioned in my review. If I racked up a consistent record of failures, I would have been asked to leave. But the Honeywell management of today apparently either doesn't understand or doesn't care that these failures could have been avoided. Instead, those who caused them get promoted. I have never seen anything like it. If this is indicative of the way all large corporations are being run, it's no wonder the economy has tanked. Monday, September 21, 2009 - Re: The September 21, 2009, blog: I agree 100% with this commentary. I've experienced it myself. I had an opportunity to leave but I chose to stick around for the benefit of helping out my co-workers in a closure. In retrospect, big mistake. Ali Cote and his gang of forty thieves gutted the place brutally and continue to do so elsewhere. Have no love for Honeywell and have no love for your coworkers. If you have an opportunity, take it! A year from now you won't regret it. Monday, September 21, 2009 If you work for a company that is purchased by Honeywell, my advice to you is to leave immediately. Regardless of the promises made and the depictions of a rosy future, conditions will never again be as good as what you presently enjoy. Leaving is difficult. But it's also difficult watching your company be slowly dismantled and shipped to China. It's difficult seeing efficient operations trashed in favor of bureaucratic red tape; your competitiveness ruined by imposed inefficiency. It's also difficult to be assigned to help move lines to China, and be coerced into doing so by promises of a better severance package if you stay and help instead of giving 2 weeks notice and leaving. Do you aid and abet Diamond Dave and his gang of thieves by helping send more jobs overseas, all for a few extra dollars? Or do you leave before you're put in that situation? When we were taken over, I bought into the propaganda, and only too late realized the truth. My bad. If I had it to do over, I would leave before the ink was dry. Sunday, September 20, 2009 Honeywell is just a name front these days. The caring and quality have long since been abolished, like most of the quality employees. The more smoke you blow, the higher you rise in the Allied Honeywell organization. Thge new motto is : The Bottom Line, whatever it takes. Show Profit any way you can. Cote will drive this company into the ground, quality wise, to get his ego trip (bonus). AFter many years Engineering for Honeywell, I hate to see what is going on now. Then there are the HR folks that don't have a cluie about morale. They just cover all their actions with lies and PIPs on folks over 50. I feel for the employees that are stuck in this mess. I hear all the time, "This is not your father's HOneywell." What a pity that the Honeywell reputation has come to the current ruthless agenda. Thank God for the US companies that still support the US workers! Thursday, September 17, 2009 - On the "'disgruntled' point": Ah! Looks like we have a classic Honeywell Blue (AlliedSignal) VERSUS Honeywell Red. Blues were all by the numbers and metrics - no matter what. Reds was more customer oriented. But I do remember a foul air around the Blues - one of a drive to assimilate the Reds and hence the start of a lot of transitions. The terminology became so extensive that an order came down to no longer use Blue or Red in any communication. Out of this was born The Power of 'one" in the word Honeywell. Wednesday, September 16, 2009 - From 'former Honeywell engineer': Maybe I missed the original 'disgruntled' point. I still think it's funny to respond to the no-sympathy poster by calling them a Cote. I didn't start with Honeywell, but I did spend most of my career at the company that was bought. You can split hairs on who has more 'longevity' and I promise this is my last post so you get the last word. My point is whatever company you were at, including classic Honeywell, is not really the same company anymore (in my opinion, such as it is). Is anyone who stays at a place sending out it's current jobs and expanding outside helping their coworkers? I'm not so sure. I recognize the need for 'food on the table', and accordingly I commented about those who had other options. If it's clear that there is to be no growth, why help them stay in business and watch your coworkers get axed. I chose not to, I saw this forum where opinions were being expressed, and I shared this apparently unpopular opinion. But I think it's a point of view worth expressing and I wish I could do it more elegantly. All the last word posts to various sub-themes here seem to be from Honeywell-proper folks, so I'll stop. Wednesday, September 16, 2009 - To "former Honeywell engineer": You are "amused" by the positions of the remaining Honeywell employees and the statements of the blogger in response to "disgruntled" because you are not an ex-Honeywell engineer. You are an ex-taken-over-by-Honeywell engineer. Consequently, you have no real longevity with Honeywell which has led you to completely miss the point of the response to "disgruntled." You further disparage one employee who had the audacity to "...work even harder because, unless he did that, he felt that he would be letting people down." You mean his co-workers? Another: you took issue with was one who "...helped to set up the production lines in China, whose work replaced many, many employees... I wonder if either of them considered their decisions on a larger scope." Consider - you mean like food on the table, a lifestyle for their families, the realization that Honeywell is really not playing by any different rules than any other similarly sized corporation? I can appreciate your disappointment with how things have turned out for your company once absorbed by Honeywell. It rarely goes well, and God knows I’m not defending Honeywell’s practices. But you really should steer clear of commenting on what or why a long-time Honeywell employee thinks or acts the way they do, because you are speaking from within a context you really know nothing of.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
The message system for this weblog is now operating correctly.
Saturday, September 5, 2009 I'm a former Honeywell engineer, having come to Honeywell when they bought my company. It was hard to imagine a better career than what I had, but eventually it was harder to imagine contributing to Honeywell and watching what they do with it. It hurt to leave, and I was as close to it's core as one could want to be, but I knew it was the right thing to do. I'm amused by those who continue to stay with Honeywell, who by their continued loyalty are helping to fund the loss of American jobs and ensuring that Cote et al will never want in their futures. I share the general sentiment of the 'no sympathy' poster, but I find I still have some sympathy. It's the sympathy you have for a prison convict who's spent so much time on the inside that upon fair release they can't cope with the world, or the sympathy one has for an insect who can't resist the blue light of a bug zapper. Both of those descriptions are how I see my ex-coworkers. I wish I knew how to help them. At my company I saw good people do a job search, and in the already tough local pre-recession economy they had great offers in hand. And like good institutionalized folks they decided instead to stay and try to make it work. One of them said that he'll work even harder because unless he did that he felt that he would be letting people down. Another even helped to set up the production lines in China, whose work replaced many, many employees. That's just two examples. I wonder if either of them considered their decisions on a larger scope. I think the unhappy Honeywell folks, particularly the ones whose good companies were bought out, should consider that their old company is gone. Yeah, the customers, products, and cubicles are largely the same, but it is not the same company. I won't go as far as saying quit (though that's the advice I would give my ex-coworkers), but consider where your contributions are going now and how they're being used. Consider what Honeywell does to its employees and customers. Consider what they'll do after you successfully retire. There's no legacy that will be continued. To the Wed. 9/2/09 poster: Maybe you're misunderstanding the post to which you so strongly responded. At Honeywell, people at our level calling someone an MBA flunky is akin to loudly calling someone m*****f****r anywhere else. Perhaps your strong reaction suggests a part of that 'no sympathy' comment landed close to home. Or not. I'm just another blogger, just as right or wrong as any of the others. Wednesday, September 2, 2009 Diamond Dave! I love that association. It gives me a vision of Dave smiling at you, squinting at you out of one eye and then, suddenly, you see a star-burst flash of light from his eye-tooth - just like in cartoons. Paint the picture next time you see him on a Town Hall telecast. It as good as Neutron Jack. By the way, these days I actually hear stock analysts starting to put blame on Neutron Jack in the way he used GE Financial - which ultimately destroyed GE's stock value and forced a dividend cut. I guess that "Straight From the Gut" will flow into "To the Colon" and "Straight out the Rectum" once historians finish their work. \ Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - To the poster of the 'disgruntled employee' comment: You either are Dave Cote, or an MBA stooge trying to sound like Dave. In either case, I'll type slow; please try to follow: Many, if not all, of the posters are those who have given their all to the company. Some are longtime "red" Honeywell employees who have the perspective of what the company used to be prior to the Allied Signal takeover. Others are from smaller companies who have had the misfortune of of being bought out since the Allied takeover, and who have no knowledge of prior Honeywell culture. In either case, many of us have, or had, satisfying careers in which we were dedicated, creative, responsible, reliable, stable, employees, often for fairly long periods of time. We are the ones who "know", who have the real knowledge, what it takes to run a factory, what it takes to truly delight customers, how to build quality products, how to value employees. We know it, because we've lived it and done it. We know the stuff you MBA types will never know, because you simply don't get it. We are are also embedded in our communities, have kids in schools, serve in our churches, volunteer in the community, have relatives in the area, etc. These are exactly the things a wet-behind-the-ears MBA stooge fresh out of school knows nothing about. So when you come along spouting off about being disgruntled and that we should just move along and take what's left of our careers elsewhere, you show what a truly stupid, vapid, insipid management-quality idiot you are. We're all of us watching companies that we care about, and have poured heart and soul into, being dismantled and disintegrated in front of our very eyes. We see firsthand the hours of waste, the lack of individual empowerment, and the management double-speak, if not outright lies. On a daily basis we see our company become a little bit less than it was the day before. And it tears our hearts out. Most of us come from companies that were far better run and more productive than the farce that is Honeywell today. We came from companies that truly cared about employees, that gave genuine reviews instead of the fill-in-the-box joke that constitutes a review today. We're from companies where individual input and feedback were actively solicited and acted upon. The only empowerment that exists today is that we're empowered to do *exactly* as management dictates. Otherwise, it's FIFO. Were you taught that acronym in MBA class? Mr. Poster, my suspicion is that your comments here will be given all the respect they deserve. And that'll probably be similar to the respect Cote's mandatory-attendance quarterly video conferences receive. Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - To the "out of sympathy for you" guy: As you live by the sword, you die by the sword. This is justice. You are obviously well into the Honeywell culture - as I was at one time. I'm no longer with Honeywell. Let me tell you, it's like a breath of fresh air after leaving. I have seen too many good co-workers happy in their early days, who come out like wet-noodles by the time they left - and have now recovered elsewhere. For all the jargon, that Honeywell cares about its talent, is a load of donkey-dung. You are used, until you are spit out. It's not that these people were not valued at the site level. The site knew the truth because they were there every day. The problem with Honeywell is that it is so centrally controlled, that you dare not have any original ideas or try some innovation at the site. These "wild" ideas disrupt all the functional-metric reporting, and play havoc on the weekly conference calls. No one has the courage on these conference calls to suggest a novel idea. The conversation have a boss-subordinate tone - dressed up as business accumen. If you don't play the good subordinate role, there will be a private call placed from VP to Site Lead and you will be talked to... One of the other problems with Honeywell is that the company really does not do a good job of vertical integration, wherein you can really add value to the customer and also enjoy expanding gross margin in delighting the customer. Instead Honeywell chooses to compete at an operational level, even within its own businesses. The result is that the product is moved from North America to Asia. Great operationally, but customer focus is lost. We know of some cases where the customer refuses to deal with these long distance affairs and insists on local representation. Tuesday, September 1, 2009 As a long time UOP employee, I take issue with the idea that we are "whiners". This used to be a great job - no I mean a great career - but since Honeywell has taken the reins, morale has fallen through the basement. The problem with the opinion of the writer of the "love it or leave it" blog post is that he fails to acknowledge the fact that many of the employees have been here for 15 to 20 years and have gotten locked into the job because of decent wages and a bad economy. As I prepare to work my last few years before retirement, I do so with a heavy heart because I fear I am seeing Honeywell rape, pillage and plunder a once great and noble company. I also kind of figure that that weblog post was written by a management yahoo tyrant just trying to keep all the lackeys in line. Hey, give me a break! Tuesday, September 1, 2009 Well, you see - a blog is exactly that, a blog. In this instance, it's about Honeywell. If we are upsetting you, then you should stay away and not get involved with something beyond your comprehension. Most of the people blogging here actually work for the company, and are true Honeywellers who are so sick of how the company is slowly disintegrating, especially after putting so much of there lives into it. Monday, August 31, 2009 To All disgruntled Honeywell employees who whine endlessly on this weblog - If you cannot put up with your employer, quit working for him and get yourself a new job. Failing which keep your grievances to yourself and give us readers a break. Please note that we have run out of Kleenex and sympathy for you. Sunday, August 30, 2009 I think that if I am prepaired to enter in to the share scheme, and commit my mony to buying shares at my risk, the least Honeywell can do is to back me up, instead of cheap-skating out of it. You talk the talk, but you do not walk the walk. Thursday, August 27, 2009 It's too bad we can't post audio & video on this site, like YouTube. I'm certain that there would be some juicy management material. It would be far more powerful than just the words. We've seen YouTube videos make main stream TV headlines. It will elevate the activism on your site. In a democracy, all views need to be posted out there for scrutiny. Let's stop hiding it behind Corporate doors! There are no longer any closed doors.
Thursday, August 27, 2009 Does anyone hear about rumors that Siemens is buying Honeywell? I heard from the customer.... Thursday, August 27, 2009 I would just like to say to Mark R Jones, SVP Human Resources that instead of addressing me as "Dear Colleague" when explaining how the company is going to assist Dave Cote to get his yearly bonus by reducing the number of matched shares in the options scheme, he should have started the letter off with "Dear Putz". Thursday, August 27, 2009 "Ducks on a pond" pretty well sums up the entire Honeywell situation, doesn't it? A pretty appearance for topsiders, while beneath the surface morale is nonexistent, rampant inefficiency is everywhere, and management types with their polished MBA's flounder aimlessly. Wednesday, August 26, 2009 You must realize that the code of conduct is implemented by the management to blow smoke for officialdom. It is not implemented to help the rank and file employee. It is there to make the senior management look good to the prying eyes of the outsider. Imagine a mirror-like pond with a duck swimming across it; to the outsider it looks serene, but under the water there is one hell of a lot of movement going on to keep the ducks head above water. Unfortunately the duck is in serious need of a life preserver. Tuesday, August 25, 2009 I would like to address the issue of Code of Conduct. Honeywell is very serious about this. Annually, everyone is required to go through an online refresher and quiz in order to gain certification. And yet, we have excutives that behave poorly on telecoms and feel justified to cus and swear for everyone to hear - across all borders. We know that they are in a position of power and recognize that their requests are important. But, it really takes away from their credibility when they resourt to foul language on the phone. It's demeaning and a form of bullying. VP Integrated Supply Chain - we know that you are in a significant position of power, but you really degrade your influence and supposed intellect with a mouth that my mother would wash out with soap. It's degrading. I'm sorry to have to report this. It's not my nature. But the justice is that, today, these type of people can no longer hide in positions of power as a result of the internet. There is a peotic justice here. If anyone disagrees, they can post their opposition here. Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - To the Contractor ...should you go with Honeywell... Yes it is true that the rank & file Honeywell employees will go to the ends of the earth to help the Customer - but not at all sites. This is done inspite of Honeywell Management, not because of Honeywell management. Here's why. Contract management will argue with you on the terms & conditions forever. Materiel & Purchasing Manager will nickel & dime you, ask you to hold the inventory and then cancel your deliverables by more than half - leaving you with the cost of inventory. Finance Manager will then promise you 60-day payment, but actually pay in 120 days - or COD, if you really get tough and are important enough. It got so bad at our site that the guys that supplied us with 2"x4" lumber for shipping and crating would put us on COD. Also, there are so many programs that are shoved down the rank & file employees. Many do not even make sense when pushed down that far. Doing high level math in a Design for Six Sigma program makes no sense at the assembly technicians level. But middle managers (like puppets) don't have the courage, or have extreme fear, in telling the upper levels to STOP. This is because there is a metric on completion of the program that is of a higher calling to Cote - and no one wants to stay in the way of the golden metric. If you do, you get calls from the site leaders, functional leaders, six sigma leaders, etc... as to why you are not complying. So why stand in the way? I've experienced this personally. All the rank & file guys & gals want is the tools to do their job properly. Many times they do not get them because of cost contrls made by Managers that are responsibile for productivity - but have zero hands-on shop floor experience - that is: paper pushers. SAP is another issue. Honeywell has been trying to implement it across all sites since 1998. You can fill a mining grade dump truck with the amount of PowerPoint presentations that have been made on this. A delay excuse is always found. Let me tell you, though, that SAP will make a site leader's life really difficult. You will lose independence and flexibility because there will be a hornet's nest of Corporate MBAs watching your activity from thousands of miles away. There will be no hidding! SAP should normally be considered a positive productivity tool. But because of the military mentality at Honeywell, you will be accused first and asked questions after! Monday, August 24, 2009 If you really are a customer with this concern, raise it to the executive level of Honeywell management. They have long since proven they don't listen to the employees. But they do listen to customers. Especially when it involves possibly losing revenue. You might just help us both. By the way, should you go with Honeywell, I know the employees will work themselves to death trying to make sure you get what was promised. As a workforce, and God knows why this is, all things considered, you won't find a more dedicated-to-the-customer group. Monday, August 24, 2009 I am a customer, and am in a process of starting a big FEED with Honeywell, UK in few weeks time. I am shocked to see all these comments about Honeywell, that the morale within employees is low in the UK. I am now thinking a lot about this, and I am worried about the quality of work that my company will get. But, it's too late to cancel the PO. Sunday, August 23, 2009 Do you not think that the whole financial blueprint that is used to run a business has been proved a failure. With the collapse of the banking and financial systems you do not need much more proof. The only problem is that no one knows what to do to fix it. All they can do is push through all of the outdated concepts while they have the chance, using recession as a smoke screen. Cote certainly does not have the kahunas to steer us through the choppy water. The rest of the management can barely check their change at the checkout. This problem runs through all businesses that use the "MBA" management structure, it is time to throw away the manuals and start again. Let us dump all the systems and theories that throw a spanner in the works. Let us start with:
Friday, August 21, 2009 Honeywell is like a blood donor who was paid to donate his blood. He liked having cash on hand to impress his friends, so he kept donating blood and flashing the cash, right up to the day he fell over dead from lack of blood. Honeywell management has sacrificed the vitality of the company in order to appease Wall Street. In reality, the company is withering. First and foremost, a factory needs to produce and sell quality products at a profit. The boys in suits calling the shots have overlooked this small detail. They've got a lot of tricks to make money; too bad they forgot (or never learned) how to operate a factory. Thursday, August 20, 2009 Honeywell has this bad business model, where they spend half the day generating and processing reports - one report in i in different outputs. If one report records that you lost $50, and the other report records you lost $50, a third report will also report you lost $50. Now, if you are so stupid, the 4th report should record that you lost a $100 because you have just wasted $50 printing and reviewing the last 2 reports. But alas, this is not so bad. Because what you do for the other half of the day is just as stupid. When an order comes in (one a week if we lucky; if you don't have sales people, don't expect the customer to come knocking) it undergoes heart surgery. Every planner wants to put his finger in it. Well, that's the okay bit; it's how they do it that just baffles the mind. Let me give you a typical order being processed: A sales order clerk somewhere enters an order into some central system. It is then allocated to the correct manufacturing centre, which is the right thing to do. But, at this point a report is sent out the the factory order person, who will enter this into the factory system. At this point we have done the job twice. The factory computer will blow out a bill of materials to get said job done. Hang on to your seat, I might lose you at this point. A master scheduler will now generate many reports for people who don't exist, and then bitch and complain because no one is responding to the emails. Then they will schedule a job (that at best has a 60 day lead-time on parts) into the quarter, regardless of how many days are left in that quarter. This job is then passed onto the planners and buyers, who will generate more reports. And then it starts getting weird; each person at this point will fill in a speadsheet, justifying why they ordering the part, and add the lead time to the report. A meeting then happens, where all the planners and all the buyers (even those who have nothing to do with the job) discuss fancy charts that have zero value. Usually at this point, someone has to state that they may have to work overtime to get the product out the door. It now becomes the job of one of the planners to hide the extra cost until someone can be found to accept the blame. Remember, up to this point, no actual work has been done to get the job started. The first thing they have to do is to pay the vendor for the last load of parts, because the vendors are just a little sick of waiting 90 days for payment. The parts have to be flown in, at a much higher cost than recorded, just to make the deadline. At this point, more justification has to be added to the spreadsheet. Color coding is put on the spreadsheet, so that each person is on the same page. Too bad that each one has a different meaning for the colors. So another meeting is called. At some point in this process, they have to start saving. So then they spend a couple-thousand dollars, looking at how to save 10 cents, and more reports are created. Once the engineers get involved, they just open another can of worms. And then the planners are back, updating their spreadsheets. After all is said, and not done, we have basically given the product away. We are in the red - but hey, we did a good job, it went out on time. Too bad it's such crappy quality. It is going to cost us in warranty costs to go out and fix it. Now this is the kicker: Our systems are designed to take an order and explode it to all its required functions. All they have to do is follow whatever the computer churns out. There will be no overtime; the job will be done right; time will be allocated correctly for testing and we will save money. But the again, what the hell do I know about business. I'm only an analyst. I don't have an MBA, and if I had to justify my existence, maybe I would be that stupid. Thursday, August 13, 2009 Cote's back at the easy-trough with Q4 pay reductions at SM even when things are looking up in Q3. Any analysts out there listening? Tell him enough is enough. He's going to kill us with his need to please you bunch of magic 8-ballers. Friday, July 31, 2009 At what point in time will someone with power make a real decision? We all appreciate the reminders on how not to contract Swine Flu. What we don't appreciate is the refusal to accept the reality of the situation - HPS are strangling themselves in a muddy pool of self denial, while our competition happily skip past Bracknell, Manchester and Aberdeen with pockets stuffed full of orders from all those "loyal" customers who are fed up being treated with distain, apathy and arrogance.What's the response from the blinkered management and those covered in moss because they've not moved from their desk in last 15 years, "We're Honeywell. The stupid customer doesn't know what he's doing" Wake up! the customer knows exactly what he's doing. As St Paul found the light on the road to Damascus our faithful SESP victims have found the light of Emerson, Yoko and many others too bright to resist. Look to the example of BSA and Honda in 1960's. BSA had had a monopoly on racing bikes for years and due to arrogance and ignorance refused to believe that the new kids on the block, Honda were a real bike company. After all what could this new shiny bike offer? Better value, better reliablity, better service - but it didn't have a BSA badge. So why would any one want it? MMM! BSA disappeared from main stream within a few years, to be resigned to the nostalgic musings of those whose memories have nothing better to think on. Sound familiar? "We're Honeywell. That's enough to get business look at our history." Sorry, no marketing, no sales strategy, no connection between service and projects (in fact exact opposite with too many piggies trying to feed from same trough), no acceptance of market demands. Take OneWireless as an example, often repeated mantra that Honeywell has the best technical wireless system is lost to an unlistening public, who cares? Customers believe the Emerson hype and sales figures, which are all that matter, proving Honeywell are so far behind it's past embarrasing. You want a wireless network for your home? Do you buy Linksys Premier Home System because it's worth £1000 to get extra 5m range and ability to connect 15 devices or do you happily accept free router from your broadband supplier? I hope those with the ability to make changes are listening. HPS is sinking, morale is zero, sales team are demotivated -just tell the truth that there will be no comission scheme instead of pretending the figurs are still being worked. August and no targets set? Come on. Please stop pretending you are listening. Honesty can be hard to accept, but if you've not worked it out let me make it simple: Honeywell Attitude = No Customers = No Job for you and me. Thursday, July 30, 2009 - from "Sick in Freeport": I am completely disgusted with this company and "management" at this point. Freeport's plant 4 has always been more a place of making ones self look good and protecting ones friends rather than making parts faster, cheaper, and with better quality. Nothing has shown this more than the most recent episode, in which a team leader proved to have more power and influence than supervisors, cell leads, and the value stream manager. This team-lead knows nothing about the machines and will admit that troubleshooting is beyond their meager skills and abilities (unless you count being recently married to a cell lead in a different plant to be a good TL ability). This person is disliked by virtually all who work with them, short of the engineers and supervisors who meet them at the bar every Thursday evening. The reason for the dislike is because the TL knows nothing about how to lead, and refuses to adapt or change to new conditions that require new strategies. The TL has been turned in to HR numerous times for offenses that would get others fired, but the drinking buddies always come to the rescue. The TL has even been turned in to EEOC, but the spin doctors were there once again. This person for years has had more authority than the off-shift supervisors, and has been able to over-ride their decisions on a frequent basis. This is the only team lead in Freeport who has their own little office area, not even close to being on the floor where they are supposed to be. The TL spends hours in this area talking to their buddies and plotting against those who are trying to actually make improvements and do their jobs. This while the operators are ignored (until they make a mistake that is, then they face the wrath of the TL, who I have seen yell at and berate operators [and even other TLs] with no repurcussions). Last week this TL was told that they were being moved to another department in a consolodation of TLs. This came from 2 cell leaders and the value stream manager. The TL threw a fit. An operator would have been written up or walked to the door for such an episode (as we have been told numerous times). Instead, this TL was able to round up all their buddies to fight on their behalf, and they got the VSM to move another TL and leave this one in their position. Not only is this TL staying in the position now, but they are picking up another area as well. The other TL has no powerful buddies and, despite going to HR, will suffer because of it. The reason behind the change? Who knows, but the rumor is that the VSM came to believe the lies that this is the only person who can do the job. This is a flat out lie. This TL is the reason why this area has shown no improvement in 10 years or so. The numbers on paper may look like it has, but that's only because of accounting tricks pulled off by one of the buddies who helped to save the job. Other areas are suffering because of these accounting tricks. On top of this, the VSM has lost what little respect he might have had remaining. The morale on the floor is utterly gone. There is no morale whatsoever. To mention the name of the VSM brings groans and eye rolls, and every person I know thinks he is worthless and hurting our jobs. Virtually all think that him and one of the drinking buddies (acocunting trick guy) are the direct reason for one area moving to China later this year. Nobody believes one word that comes out of his mouth, and he cannot give a simple yes or no answer to any question. He is laughed at on a daily basis, but he is hated as well for his poor leadership, double-talk, and two-faced comments. This recent episode is not the worst episode I have seen in this company, but it is just too much on top of everything else. The announcement that the TL was moving was the only thing I have heard in the past two years that actually cheered up the operators in this area and made them feel good about their jobs and the progress the area might make in the future. Now, they are more depressed and dejected than ever before. Wednesday, July 29, 2009 As an engineer working for UOP, it's horrible to see the recent decline in quality of work due to "cheap" labor. Now, a small number of the India engineers are very good; however, a lot of them are brainess people. They can't seem to follow procedures and ask questions as needed. They make unsound assumptions and believe that anything the computer splits out must be good. What happened to understanding the technology and knowing what you are doing? It's all about pushing buttons on the computer and get an answer spit out to you. UOP's downfall will be soon. Who knows, may be the whole engineering dept will move to Delhi! Monday, July 27, 2009 The July 24 comment once again proves that the only philosophy Cote and his bunch understand is CYA and FIFO (fit in or f--- off.) They know nothing about running a factory. Hear that? When you look at the long and growing list of blunders, bewildering decisions, contradictory directives, incredible oversights, and squandered assets (both physical and personnel) it leads to the inescapeable conclusion that actually running a factory---doing all the things normally associated with valuing customers, producing quality products, and treating employees fairly---is something they know nothing about. Wozniak (president of ACS) is a classic example. She loves to brag about Honeywell's ability to design and manufacture sensors. But she's only a poseur, a pretender. The real truth is that she (and Cote) have effectively eviscerated that capability. There is nothing but a hollow shell of a company behind her bold pronouncements, and still she leads the company ever downwards. She clearly believes that if she has the ability to speak those words, then others must have the ability to make it so. They do, but it will never happen as long as management continues on a destructive path. Cote and his group need to go. Friday, July 24, 2009 The reason it went from 60 to 90 is because finance don't have a clue how things are made. All the supplier has to do is go "COD" and they will quickly move payments to 60 days or less. No, they are not going to go rushing off to get a new supplier because they don't have someone on staff to do that work. The reason for this is that Honeywell works within verticals and verticals within those verticals. All sites are vertical dependent, and then in each site the departments are all vertical dependent. So in one site the engineers don't know what the fabricators are doing and vice versa. When the logistic person in the supply chain tries to get a better supplier for a product and the benefit goes to engineering, then all 3000 managers in the supply chain find ways to get rid of the logistic person. You would think that its a benefit to the whole site and Honeywell as a whole. But alas everything must be of benefit to the cost center that pays your salary. All you have to do is leave a paper trail that looks like your vertical is saving and they leave you alone. Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - To: Outside supplier - PO's from 60 to 90 days: I think that you know how to resolve this problem as a supplier. Just jack up your future quotations up by 2% to cover your financing/carrying costs. You are lucky you got 90 days. Our site would quote 60 but pay in 120 days. Contractors were pretty pissed about this and, after awhile, would put the Honeywell site on COD. This is one of Honeywell's dirty little embarrasing secrets. Oh, and by the way...watch out for the national agreements. To my experience, national contract are always more expensive to Honeywell than what you can get locally through your own purchasing agreements. So if you are able to quote a national agreement you can make a significant premium - with little extra effort. Wednesday, July 22, 2009 It isn't much better as an outside supplier. Purchasing's latest way of sticking it to us is by changing the payment terms on existing PO's from 60 to 90 days, after the job is delivered and invoiced! Strange place to do work for. Monday, July 20, 2009 I think that "Animal Farm" would be a more appropriate book choice. Saturday, July 18, 2009 Have you read "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair? We are reliving it at Honeywell. Friday, July 17, 2009 - RE Wednesday July 15th, blog: You sound like a guy who is not under threat of losing his job because your boss has decided to use engineering skills from India. Well listen up, those people earn under $20K a year and do not get paid over time even though they might do 18 hour days. And your bosses are charging the customer at your hourly rate. How ethical is that? Perhaps you will change your mind when you are standing in the unemployed line, while your job is being done by someone from India, and your boss is getting paid incentive based on the difference between the two salaries. Thursday, July 16, 2009 I have worked in a number of companies before joining Honeywell UK some years ago. In all my years in working in a multi national enviroment, I have never met such a bunch of backside kissing, box ticking management before. We go through pointless exercises, where even the local management see absolutely no benefit, because they have been instructed to do so from the senior management in Europe. Even local, relatively low level, appointemnts have to be agreed right at the top of the food chain. Management are constantly chasing the monthly figures, custmer service comes a very poor second. Management on day to day decision is taken from the senior management in Europe, and the UK management just do as they are told. I suppose it's a good excuse that they are "Just following orders" - now where have we heard that before? Morale is very low, but the comittment to delivering a quality product from the guys at the coal face is second to none. Ask anyone who has to do an honest days work what the situation is at Honeywell. The truth will be out! Wednesday, July 15, 2009 Ref: "If there is a perverse sort of silver lining in these clouds, it is the fact that the mind-boggling arrogance, sense of entitlement and racist condescension that was seemingly bred into most North American and Western European (especially British) engineers has really taken a hit." I'm not the blogger who made the '3rd world engineers' comment, but I am a white, North American engineer who resents comments such as yours. I am objective enough to recognize and appreciate engineering talent and ability regardless of its country of origin. Any engineer who can make a positive contribution to a project is welcome, as far as I'm concerned. However, Honeywell seems to have taken the approach of hiring inexperienced engineers straight out of college, giving them fancy titles, and calling them 'experts'. If you don't like the term '3rd world', then let's call them 'Chinese'. You want to talk about arrogance, entitlement, and condescension? I've worked numerous projects with these folks. Without any consideration towards actual experience and ability, Honeywell management has placed project after project squarely in their laps. And without exception, the advice and guidance offered has been ignored to the point where each project has serious technical flaws, is behind schedule, and requires extensive intervention(trips) from North American engineers in an attempt to salvage a small fraction of the project's original goals. I don't fault the Chinese engineers for their inexperience. But I do fault them for their arrogance and condescension towards more experienced western engineers. Then again, what do you expect when you tell a newly minted grad that he's an expert? Most of all I fault Honeywell management for their incredible stupidity to assume a poorly thought out plan such as this could possibly work. Along the way I've learned to avoid generalizations, something which you lot and your sunshine comment might consider. Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - Re the comment from June 9, 2009, ending with "Good luck with your 3rd world engineers." Goodness knows that plenty of mistakes have been, and continue to be made by short-sighted people obsessed with irrelevant Six Sigma projects and other time-wasting initiatives. However, that final comment about “3rd world engineers” really struck a nerve with me (and I'm neither an engineer nor from the "3rd world"). If there is a perverse sort of silver lining in these clouds, it is the fact that the mind-boggling arrogance, sense of entitlement and racist condescension that was seemingly bred into most North American and Western European (especially British) engineers has really taken a hit. You lot are learning the hard way that the world actually doesn’t revolve around you, and that brilliant rays of sunshine actually don’t emanate from your behinds. Good on you. Tuesday, July 14, 2009 It would be most refreshing if the board of directors would get off their dead a$$es and take action before this company is completely down the pipes. Unfortunately, their past history of inactivity provides little reason for optimism. Does the BOD really do anything? Are they really just a rubber stamp for Cote? Or is it just a good old boys (and girls) club? Once you sit on enough BOD's for various corporations you no longer have to work for a living? How can a sane person watch what's happening and do nothing? Monday, July 13, 2009 If you look at how communications works in its various modes, only 7% of people actually read the written material - like the pretty colored charts on the shop floor. This is even worse if the charts are produced by people other than those that are directly involved. The committment becomes detatched and it becomes a "we" - "they" situation. The Toyota system does not work like that. There is another reason that the imported Toyota system does not work at Honeywell. Toyota makes a commitment to its employees that if they have a great idea that will not put them out of a job, they are redeployed & retrained into another position where the same great thinking can be used again. This is a powerful motivator. At Honeywell you never hear this committment from Cote. I have heard it on videotape from Toyota. Cote is always about "responding to market conditions" (code for lowest marginal cost). So great ideas most likely result in your outsourcing - as we see from many of the blog entries. Bosidy was the last one to come close to ensuring your job when he was rolling out Total Quality. I know that my TQ Facilitator had Bosidy's direct private number to take care of any Manager's resistance to the process - and he used it!. But this too has failed under Cote stand backish approach. HOS and Six Sigma have been moved to number 5 in Cote's Five Inituitives - an after thought. Yes, there have been programs and ad posters on site promoting growth idesa - but most sites can't compete at that level. As far as capital is comcerned. The process is terrible. It is more about how classy and smooth-tongued you are to make an arguement to the VP. This is the problem. The VP's are setting themselves up as the center of the universe - especially in Aerospace ISC. All attention is directed at them by site managers. So the sites see this more as a game of winning the VPs favor at any cost to get the capital funds. The capital reviews are usually setup up as a round-robin of conference calls. Monday, July 13, 2009 I have worked in Freeport, IL (home of the old Micro Switch, and now part of ACS) since the early '90s. The longer I work here, the more I see the complete lack of leadership. Leadership, by definition, means to lead. The definition of leadership in this part of the company is to lie, cheat, and manipulate people and numbers to make it look like they are doing their jobs. HOS was put in place to take advantage of the knowledge of the factory employees who actually perform the tasks. This was taken from Toyota, which has used it for many decades to be one of the world's leaders in efficiency and reducing waste. Management has turned this into a visual system to show their bosses something pretty to look at when they visit Freeport once or twice a year. Virtually no improvement has been shown in the majority of areas that have implemented HOS. This is becaue management ignores the workers who know what works and what doesn't work, and because they show no faith in the system because they do not enforce it. What could be a valuable tool to improve efficiency is instead an expensive waste of time that results in some pretty colored papers and charts that nobody looks at or uses. Some of the areas in Freeport are run by virtual cartels of 'drinking buddies' who oust anybody who disagrees with them, and who continue to promote their own who are not qualified for the positions. Truthfully, I would not put most of the 'leaders' I work with in charge of a McDonald's, let alone a large manufacturing company or a department. Many of the factory jobs in Freeport plant 4 are now in the process of moving to China and Mexico. These jobs are not moving because the employees can't compete with overseas workers. These jobs are moving because management failed to provide the equipment and support needed to improve output and reduce costs. For too many years, management routinely denied requests for automated equipment, for requests to update old equipment, and just about any other improvement that would cost money or take some sort of effort on their part. Now, a multitude of highly skilled and dedicated workers are being let go so that cheaper labor can build the parts. The sad part is that the managers who denied the improvement requests that probably would have kept the jobs here are keeping their jobs. Many of them will be promoted eventually, allowing them to destroy ever larger parts of the company in their zeal to make themselves look better. It's mind bogling to think what this company could be like if the leaders actually knew how to lead. Monday, July 13, 2009 Concerning the Honeywell weblog. Please, always remember that Honeywell is not really Honeywell anymore. It is Allied Signal hiding under the name Honeywell. And it is the Allied Signal mentality that is ruining not only Honeywell operations, but also the Honeywell name. Friday, July 10, 2009 - To: "Having been with Honeywell here in the UK for 5 years or so...." This summary is bang on! If you didn't say UK, one could have thought that you were writing about North America. Cote has presided on a stock loss from over $60 to under $30 per share. You can't blame this loss only on the recession. The lapdog Board of Directors needs to get out of the swine-fat feeding pen. Honeywell needs to be broken up for improved shareholder value. This type of breakup is already being discussed at GE because of the fiasco that GE Capital brought upon the company. Friday, July 10, 2009 Having been with Honeywell here in the UK for 5 years or so, I think have sufficient knowledge and experience to post a fairly accurate description of life in HPS today. In all my working career I have never seen such a disjointed company where the "silo" mentality is as prevalent and entrenched as here in HPS. Operations – sales – project management - HR, all have there own agendas and management structures; no big picture and no strategic thinking; and supported by an inept, incompetent and aloof management who are in the main inward-looking and provide little or no guidance. They are incapable of leadership, don't fundamentally understand what it is we actually do, and have lost the respect of the majority of staff. In fact, I would go as far as saying that swine flu is more popular than this lot. A good working relationship between sales and operations, which is fundamental to the success of any company, to use a management term is "challenging". Indeed, they are virtually at war in some affiliates. For those HR and management people who are reading this post, you are an overhead - you are neither chargeable to the customer i.e. engineering, nor do you bring in orders i.e. sales; instead you just sit in your ivory towers, presenting other people's work and achievements as your own, writing endless, pointless e-mails instead of actually doing something, and telling each other what a wonderful job you are doing – it's a club. Simple as that! The hurdles in place (processes as they are called) are now so numerous, complex and convoluted that getting anything done has become virtually impossible. We are losing projects in our key accounts. Winning new business is becoming increasingly difficult, with Emerson and Yokogawa in particular being aggressive commercially, and being prepared to work with customers in a collaborative approach. Much of the fault for this lies with senior Honeywell HPS management who, quite frankly, are more concerned about instigating new processes, risk avoidance, cost cutting, centralizing decision making. These are all issues which impact customer responsiveness and agility, at a time in the economy when Honeywell needs to be building bridges with its customers instead of burning them. "Growing the business" amounts to putting up prices by a disproportionate percentage, year on year, to milk the existing customers (using exchange rate fluctuations as cover) whilst employing the Honeywell Process Development pretty much universally despised by all (except the management and their toadies) to either minimize pay rises or used to justify redundancies. Management who have personal issues with employees will target those individuals using the HPD process. When redundancies are planned, guess who get Riffed first? There are many, many examples. Recent Low Lights
The net result is that a good number of Honeywell employees have forgotten who actually pays their salary. For clarity, it's not Honeywell - who are nothing more than middle men in the process - but in fact every single customer who places orders each and every year. Until the management and senior staff of this company realize this, the continued decline of this once great company, which these people are presiding over, will continue. The cost structure is far, far too high. Honeywell has too many non-contributors. The number of utterly pointless internal positions that contribute absolutely nothing to this company is beyond belief). There is too little staff with a "can do" attitude with only minimal customer focus. But for this too change will require many of these people who have directly contributed to this mess and instigated this structure to fall on their swords. So expect no change there. There are many, many outstanding employees in this company, employees who have carried this company for many many years in spite of its management defencies. Too many people have been marginalized and treated with utter contempt, to a point that they have simply lost any respect for the management of this company. Morale within the staff is at an all time low, and has gone from frustration to disbelief to anger and now contempt. The management, in conjunction with HR, continues to destroy and act in a manner that some would describe as underhanded, and others would describe as shameful. As this behavior continues, productivity continues to fall, and management continue to send out e-mails about "Growth Strategy" and "customer focus" and "doing a great job" and hold monthly "Town Hall Meetings". It's like something straight out of a Dilbert cartoon. But it's not funny its actually tragic. We, here in HPS UK, considered ourselves to be one of the best Honeywell affiliates, not just in EMEA but also globally. Now we are being destroyed bit-by-bit, and the sad thing is that management don't get it. In short, the lack of any leadership, joined up thinking and too many personal agendas at local level are crippling us. This is combined with HR (opps, sorry Business Partners) who recently employed a certain person who has said quite openly that they enjoyed "sacking people" and quotes the word FIFO – Fit In or F&!k Off. What is happening is nothing short of shameful. And for those senior management within the UK - if you are reading this and you genuinely want to make things better, come down and speak with the guys who are at the front-end and listen to what they have to say. But please - without the Business Partners. But sadly, you almost certainly won't. But, in the unlikely event that you do, you will probably send a middle ranking managers, who will filter and distort the facts to suit there own agendas. And the mess we are currently in will continue. Friday, July 10, 2009 - from a lifetime Honeywell employee: Ethics - what a joke! Honeywell is just a mass of defective upper managers. They don't have an ounce of caring for employees. One of the worst excuses for a leader takes advantage of everyone; Honeywell,employees, customers, contracts, for his own gain. Well that is a model for most HI upper managers; fire all your senior people so they are not a threat to uncover your lack of knowledge. Human resources is just Honeywell's legal system, and should never be trusted. Thursday, July 9, 2009 - To: "just found this site and it breaks my heart...in the UK...": Don't feel too bad. I was around at the time that Yeovil people were reduced by 1/3 or more. Managers at the time were affectionately named the "Butchers of Honeywell" - similar to the nut bag "Neutron Jack". It was unjustified to call the individuals this at a personal level since we knew their history, which was positive and strong - but it's what evil Honeywell made them do. It's like mixing matter and anti-matter. Because they could not reconcile the conflict, they couldn't live with the evil Honeywell, so they left. Wednesday, July 8, 2009 At Honeywell in Houston, it's sad to see the the organization has become so completely gutted that it is now a hollow shell with only marginal technical capability. If a specialist is needed, they fly them in from India. On one project I worked on, almost all technical staff were brougt from India to do the technical work such as configuration and graphics development. It's a shame that Honeywell management lies to the U.S immigration service saying that the workers are being brought in as 'management'. Perhaps Cote could be replaced by a far less expensive Indian 'Manager'. Tuesday, July 7, 2009 I just found this site and it breaks my heart to read it. I worked for Honeywell industrial in the UK and Europe from 1976 until I got fired in 2001 after the Allied merger. It used to be a great company and people were proud to work for it. "Integrity" was an important value, as was customer service, and it was a brilliant place to work with brilliant people to work with. I'm now reading about unmotivated, disenfranchised workers and an uncaring fatcat management. Sad. Very, very sad. I shouldn't care any more, but I do. Time I got a life. Wednesday, July 1, 2009 Honeywell has been using the bad economy as a cover to move manufacturing from North America to Asia and Mexico. Whenever Honeywell has had layoffs everyone assumed it was the bad economy and nobody has dug any deeper. We have had plans for moving the product lines for a few years and the only reason why we didn't do it was because of the adverse publicity of laying off tonnes of people in a good economy. That sort of move invites awkward questions. The moment the economy tanked we saw the opportunity to move the lines, offload thousands of workers and use the bad economy as an excuse. We are working hard and fast to get the product lines moved before the economy picks up again. Wednesday, June 17, 2009 June 18 will be the day Q3 furloughs are announced for SM, as reported from the people in the trenches at the analyst described "jewel" in the SM crown, UOP. I can understand it being necessary to prevent job losses, but it's hard to swallow, considering that Morristown is still sitting pretty. I doubt Diamond Dave cares; he just wants us to swallow. Long live the King. Tuesday, June 16, 2009 Here is the fall of Caesar, compared to the impending fall of Honeywell (Cote), as spoken by Shakespeare....
Casca: Speak, hands, for me! .... Caesar: Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar! Cinna: Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead! Freedom at last! Tuesday, June 9, 2009 - Re: "Maybe the really upper people can take pay cuts of 20% or more" ... This writer is bang on. Leadership starts at the top. But there are really no Leaders at Honeywell - not in the Poter sense. They are all just detail Managers - and really insecure Managers, at that. A Leader, to me, sets the stage and has the charisma, through his words and tone alone, to engage my passion and emotion where I will pickup the sword and charge ahead for him/her. It is powerful. Don't appeal to my logic. This will never work. Logic is just a method used to justify a decision that has already been made through emotion. There actually have been a few of these passionate Leaders at Honeywell through the years, but to the last person, they have all left. It makes me angry that they did not stay for an extended period to make a lasting difference. There is no such thing as a Leader at Honeywell today - inspite of all the rhetoric and creative titles. I have no idea on how many times I have been on the phone with several layers of Management, including VP's, going over the same spreadsheet or powerpoint on some minuscule detail that should always be irrelevant to a VP - just to micro manage and make sure that it is politically correct for him/her to present to the next level. How shallow can the upper layers be? Honestly, it is more painful on the nerves than the Chinese water torture. But they do it again and again and again! If you object in the slighest, you are labled as uncooperative. These are all signs of excessive control. It's a condition that kills innovation and kills caring. This was not as it used to be. It reflect the level of lack of confidence that is rising. It is growing like a cancer. Without confidence and trust, the Captain can yell out all the orders he wants, but the troops will listen only because they do not want to end up in the hole (or poor performance review). I know that these are tough economic times. I follow the details daily and research material. So, it is easy for someone to frame their response to this within the difficult economic events of the last six months. But look at the nature of the postings over a number of years. The seeds of discontentment have been planted long ago. The tree is now bearing the sour fruit. Tuesday, June 9, 2009 I guess those of us who have to retire to keep our retiree medical benefits are doing it for reasons of health. When I signed the binding contract for the old S&C pension, I agreed to take less money for guaranteed retiree insurance. Sensing & Control was a great division of Honeywell. Upper management ran the business profitably and treated the employees with fairness and integrity. Apparently the Jack Welch school of management does not teach this. Senior management, just remember: What we senior engineers know about the business and products we worked with will leave with us. Good luck with your 3rd world engineers. Tuesday, June 9, 2009 So Jack Bolick retired for "health reason"; some yes-man made a big issue about Jack's health. Evidently, Jack was just sick of Honeywell, and like everyone else that has left, their health improves drastically a few weeks later. Jack is now healthy enough to be CEO of Adura Technologies. It will just be a matter of time before he ships work off to India, like the good Dave-Cote student that he is. Tuesday, June 9, 2009 Strategy? The only strategy I see is that "Employees are our best asset" and "We have to get rid of out best assets to be successful". Honeywell has been on a one-track mindset since the downturn; "cut costs" is all they are doing. There is no thought behind it, no other concepts, and no other plans. Just "cut costs, cut costs, cut costs". That is not a strategy, it is a statement. A business is a very complex thing filled with little details that all interact. By focusing on just one detail you end up upsetting the balance and screwing up the rest of it. Cutting costs is a good move and it will help, but it is only one of many things that can be done. It gives immediate results and can be plotted on a spreadsheet which is why Honeywell uses it. Anything more in-depth and complex than that requires understanding the business. Honeywell is very top-heavy and far too authoritarian for its own good. We have people making decision on things they have never been involved in before. This is the first place I have worked where my immediate boss could not do my job. In fact, my immediate boss would not know where to begin to try and do my job. My bosses boss has even less idea and the further up you go the more they are divorced from the process. However, people 2 or 3 levels above me are making decisions on technical issues that they do not understand. I have absolutely no input on the matter which means I get the blame when a really bad idea does not work. What we need to do is to implement the 10% salary cut across the board, so that management can show their solidarity. Maybe the really upper people can do 20% or more. After all, will Dave Cote go under if he only has $20 million per year? He managed it a year or two ago. Anyway, the pay cut across the board would help, followed by a streamlining of supervisory positions. Do we really need 3 managers for 9 people? And 1 super-manager for 3 managers? Then we need to bring the "technical or detailed" decision-making back down the chain. Upper management can do what they do best, steer the ship in the right direction, but let us workers handle boiler pressure and hull stress. Tuesday, June 9, 2009 - RE: "We have not had any competitive advantage since Dave Cote joined.": At the risk of putting too fine of a point on the subject, I think many areas of the company *had* a competitive advantage when Cote joined. Likewise, I think many of the companies since acquired *had* a competitive advantage also. However, in both cases and under Cote's "leadership" the competitive advantages have been lost as knowledge and resources have been squandered in the rush to move production overseas. It's no longer about building and selling quality products, it's about achieving some arbitrarily set number at the risk of whatever it takes. Monday, June 8, 2009 We know that management reads comments on this site; the sad part is when they add comments of thier own, they still speak in Dave Cote's voice. We, the people, listen to the same load of garbage, so when some management person adds comments, you pick it up like radar. The way to make money is to sell something. Too bad the management have not got this yet. Moving numbers around a spreadsheet will not improve the bottom line, no matter how fancy the spreadsheet is. Name brands are no longer the big selling feature; quality and price is what the customers want, and the Honeywell brand name is slowly starting to stink. We have lost quality in the pursuit of making the quarterly numbers. Somebody needs to tell people like Dave Cote and his buddies in GM, and other so called big business, that their time has come to take their big millions and go retire somewhere, and let's get someone in who knows how to run a business. If there is anyone out there that thinks the current management is going to pull this company out of the downward spiral it is in, they are more stupid than the management, whose feet they are kissing. The main reason management can't share their "strategies" is because they don't have any - not because of the "potential competitive advantage". We have not had any competitive advantage since Dave Cote joined. Monday, June 8, 2009 Yes, they are two different universes. The fact is that the company must be run by the numbers, not emotion... and labor is a cost. Companies have to relentlessly push out/down costs while increasing revenues - these are direct conflicts (you can't increase sales and not increase costs). This is probably why it make very little sense to most people. Management is making tough decisions and really trying to be creative to save headcount for the upswing in the economy. It certainly seems heartless... I'm not in that management chain, I'm a worker, but I do have a little feel about how business works. There is a clear division in running the business and producing in the business. The workers will feel the pinch every time these decisions are deployed. Now, being a cost leader is NOT a sustainable competitive advantage. Cote and others simply MUST put more effort (or evidence of at least trying) into pursuing the other avenues to build and sustain competitive advantage. But it's going to be tough to do that in a multi-national conglomerate... if not cost leadership, then generically (per Porter) it needs to be: a/ Differentiation or b/ Focus (niche markets or product lines). That's going to be tough - again due to too broad of a product mixes and market range. Cote and company will need to set up some very specific strategies (like dumping products/lines... which might appear to be simply layoffs when they are not). But be forewarned, they will not be able to share those strategies as that will kill any potential competitive advantage. You can't give away the secret recipe! But cost-leadership is generic, everyone is doing it, and there is nothing secret about it. And THAT strategy is really the only one you are going to easily see. You will have to just understand and deal with that. Sucks when it's you, though.... If REALLY you want to see a better picture of what they are doing, dig through the financials (look at % changes YoY, changes in margins, capitalization strategies, cash flows, etc for each segment as well as the business in total). It *would* be very nice to see some concern for managing the gray space between running the company and producing for the company. Solidarity would go a long way at this point. Saturday, June 6, 2009 I work for ACS. We are having multiple furloughs (unpaid time off) so they can make our numbers. We made 10% growth instead of 15% so we are most likely having another week in December unpaid. We are currently moving multiple products from Juarez to China to save money. I believe it is time to move on to another company. Friday, June 5, 2009 - On the topic: Great example of the people making decisions - ISC: I'm not surprised how ISC conducts itself. VP Aftermarket Services and VP Integrated Supply Chain are known for this behaviour. They are also known for closing sites and exporting jobs to Asia and gutting the USA. These guys also use the Media Relations puppet. He uses the same tired text for all the closures. How uncreative! Friday, June 5, 2009 I am not surprised that Dave Cote doesn't show solidarity with the workers. I met him once a few years ago and I thought to myself "what an a**hole". The only person he cares about is himself. He would fire the whole company in an instant if it meant him getting a bigger bonus. He sees himself as some sort of CEO and god-like figure in the world of management. If he had another life he would fall in love with himself. The people hanging round him were like sheep, laughing when he laughed and agreeing with his every word. It was such a sad sight to see. If he is the sort of person that being a CEO turns you into, then I do not want to go any further up the management chain. Thursday, June 4, 2009 Cote and the average US Honeywell worker live in two different universes. The workers believe their jobs are to excell at manufacturing products or providing services. Cote couldn't care less about this. His job is about taking over other companies, exploiting their assets to make the numbers, and then sending the jobs overseas. One domino after another. I, too, keep waiting for any indication from Cote of solidarity with the employees. But I'm certain now that it will never happen. He views himself as a tiger in a company filled with mice. If you think for an instant that there is any care or concern for Joe Average, you're wrong. Your job is just another potential asset for him to use on his way towards making the numbers, and the heck with jobs and careers. Tuesday, June 2, 2009 Great example of the people making decisions. Corporate policy calls for a prorated bouns based on the number of months worked prior to retirement. Prior to retiring in Nov 08 I contacted HR and they confirmed I would be paid for the 11 months based on the formula in the policy. After I retired they decided not to pay the bonus to retirees, however Cote got his at $3.5M. this is paid out of a pool of money that is set aside to be devided between all "Participants". Note the response "lack of Budget" must mean more was needed for Cote. I have reviewed the concerns you have raised regarding the decision not to pay you MIP in March 2009. While I appreciate your disappointment, as you are aware, consistent with the plan documents, while you were eligible for consideration for payout, there is simply no guarantee of a MIP payout for any employee. For the 2008 MIP plan year, Aerospace ISC in the U.S. decided not to pay individuals who were not active at the time of payout due to limited funding. This decision was entirely within the ISC Function’s discretion and the decision is final. Wednesday, May 27, 2009 Got a news flash for all of you: Honeywell hates unions with a passion and the power sharing that that involves. There are about 25 unionized sites out of 250. The unionized sites tend to be slowly gutted with the work being sent to Asia. You will be fed the standard line that Honeywell is always re-evaluating its businesses and that its a matter of cost competitiveness. So, you cannot win in this type of competitive environment. Tuesday, May 26, 2009 - from "One Very Unhappy Honeywell Worker": Honeywell = Greed. They couldn't care less about the ones who really make the money - the hourly workers. I say UNION YES. Seems like that's the only thing that would get them to change. Tuesday, May 26, 2009 In the Middle East, the so called growth region, after giving a 25% pay cut to staff and lay-off's, they now are not even clearing the Staff Expenses for more than 2 months. Thanks to the "great leaders". Monday, May 25, 2009 Why am I not surprised that Honeywell US hasn't implemented SAP? They always use Europe as a test bed, willing to gamble on whether a new business tool will work, without damageing the US side of the business. If you go back to the past too, and see how much damage that it did to the business and morale. The US comes up with these big ideas, hoping to save mony; but they always fail for the same problem: They run out of development before the product is finished. Then they don't roll it out properly, don't do training properly, and we are left with a product that doesn't do the job properly. Wednesday, May 20, 2009 Every year we get told that SAP will be coming next year. By the time next year rolls around, we are told that it will be delayed until the next year. The only thing that is certain is that when SAP does come we will be out of a job. Tuesday, May 19, 2009 Back in the days when you Oracle there was nothing else. Then big "D" decided that it was SAP, but we have some Oracle still in US. the conversion from Oracle to SAP was being done in Europe, while north America was later in this year and beyond. Now that we have been told to RIP (reduction in Pay), do they still have money to throw away on SAP or have they decided to put that on hold? Bets are in that some MBA will try do both. Monday, May 18, 2009 How would we initiate a class action law suit, about the loss of medical benefits in retirement? Thursday, May 14, 2009 Honeywell ethics: What a joke! Lay off the 50% UK, install staff and send the engineering offshore. Wednesday, May 13, 2009 They want all of us to sacrifice while getting zero raises for 2 years. Then they throw a 1% raise at you the third year so they can avoid a law suit by firing you. They have a policy in effect saying that they can fire you if you get three zero raises in a row, then they brow beat the supervisers into giving you nothing and trump up some stupid reasons that are absolutely b.s. to make it look like it's not discrimination. Then they give you the 1% the third year. It has taken us a little while to catch on to this, but now I think people are getting pretty pissed off. It's just a way of getting the old people with seniority out the door. Funny, the old people must have done something right or why did Honeywell keep them all these years? When are we going to do something about this? We need a class action lawsuit, because all of our retirement is going, and the medical is going, and we will be gone next. Wake up people! We didn't spend 20 or 30 years here to let them take everything we have. Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - Re: "Honeywell is the most unethical company imaginable.": Yup, I swallowed the 'ethics' propaganda hook, line, and sinker. Then I discovered there's "ethics", and then there's "Honeywell ethics." My mistake was assuming they were one and the same thing. One would think "ethics" is an absolute. Doesn't depend on circumstances. "Right" is right. Right? Wrong. What was so incredible was that, the course of behavior that was so proper and crystal clear to me was systematically derided and demeaned by management. And so I was written up. My conscience is clear. But lesson learned. Now I know *exactly* what kind of company Honeywell is. Tuesday, May 12, 2009 The comments on UOP are dead on. Honeywell lucked into owning half of this company with the Allied merger, then got the rest when Dow decided to sell it's half. So now a leading process control company ends up owning the premier technology development company for the process industries - a marriage made in heaven, right? Well no. The MBAs and dolts in MTO decided to stick UOP under Specialty Materials, the legacy Allied losers who bring you carpet fiber and candle wax. Of course the fact that they make a lot of profit which offsets all the losers and restructuring charges didn't hurt. So now, instead of going good science and discovering new processes, high talented UOP engineers with dozens of patents to their name are sitting around learning Six Sigma and the rest of time-wasting programs-of-the-month. And getting furloughed and screwed out of benefits like everyone else. Tuesday, May 12, 2009 Honeywell is the most unethical company imaginable. I left many months ago and am still in disbelief. Anyone with talent and/or morals should get out now. I realize that people at different levels/different areas of the company will have different experiences. I was "near the top" and found the organization to be thick with politics, behind in technology, a track record of bosses who can lie/defame employees they see as internal competitors (and the VPs believe whatever they are told!). When Cote removed "integrity" from the list of "desired employee behaviors," that said it all for me. I'm also glad to be out of there and not have to hear about immoral "extra curricular activities". Monday, May 11, 2009 Honeywell management have no clue as to the size of the beast they created. Six Sigma and Green Belt must be the biggest waste to any company, one step shy of ISO. ISO is the lie that customers will only deal with companies that are ISO certified. ISO is just the process where you document procedures. But documenting nonsense does not make you any better; it just means you have something documented. Now Greenbelt/six sigma: This is where we spend 6 months to do something that we could have done in 6 days, and then find out it was a complete waste of time in about 6 seconds. It cost about $25,000 for every green belt project that is done. I know (because i have been one of these) that, to be certified you need to do a greenbelt project. But alas, people are re-inventing the wheel. I have been on a green belt project to do a process that I had completed about 6 years ago. It only took me about a day to do it, but with the greenbelt it took about 3 months (of endless meeting). And you know what, there were some people on the project who thought they had just created life. Bet your MBa didn't cover that. We change staff in India/China/Mexico almost weekly, so I don't think anyone there will be getting certified in the near future. Monday, May 11, 2009 Honeywell bought UOP and is quickly and methodically running it into the ground. It is almost comical watching these clueless morons ruin a once well-run company. Besides taking away benefits every couple of months, we are shocked at their silly way of running a company. Work harder for less on useless Honeywell Operating procedures. Thanks Dave Cote - enjoy our medical benefits dollars in your bonus. Saturday, May 9, 2009 I have not seen much six-sigma involvement regarding the business transformation. Do you think they have run out of ideas? Or do you think the employees who give them the ideas cannot be bothered any more? What about out sourcing the whole six sigma operation to India, think of the money that will save!! Friday, May 8, 2009 Honeywell has talked about the integrity of this company for quite sometime now. Also how it's employees should also have that integrity. It's about time Honeywell shows this integrity and does the right thing for their employees. Friday, May 8, 2009 The cutting off of the retiree medical is not age discrimination. It's a blatant breaking of the contract the company signed with the employees when we were given a one time irrevocable choice to select the 'new' defined contribution retirement plan or maintain the legaqcy defined benefit retirement plan which included Retiree Medical. The new plan did/does not have retiree medical. This was a major factor in what many of us chose and now the company is screwing us. Friday, May 8, 2009 The HPS management team have decided to have a live-chat. They give you the option of identifying yourself when you ask a question. Well, for starters only the usual suspects are going to attend - those that do attend in the hope to ask questions are more dumb than the usual suspects. They already have the questions they will answer and those they wrote themselves. This live chat is to plead poverty, and almost sound human when doing it; that way when the put a pen through all those names people will not blame them. One thing i tell you they will achieve from this chat, the loss of productive work will be in excess of a few hundred thousand dollars. But, I'm just one of the guys that will get laid off because they need to recover that loss to give it to Dave Cote next year. Thursday, May 7, 2009 When Cote schedules a Town Hall broadcast across all of Honeywell, our IT folks diligently set up all the broadcast equipment in all of our conference rooms and cafeterias. It's funny, when Cote is broadcasting, you walk by these rooms and they are all empty. Cote is talking to an empty rooms - and this has been for some time. Thursday, May 7, 2009 Any other Honeywellers who can't retire, chose the "legacy" retirement plan and will lose the agreed upon (in 2000 retirement choice) subsidized retirement health care benefit? I am looking into a class action lawsuit for age discrimination, based on Honeywell "forcing" older employees to choose between retirement, medical help and severance benefits. This is based on the philosophy that Honeywell doesn't want to pay BOTH when our plants are finally moved to Asia. I will blog when I've spoken to attorneys about feasibility. At that point we may no longer need to be anonomous... Thursday, May 7, 2009 Honeywell is using the current economic crisis to cut jobs in the US. There is not a recession everywhere in the world. Other countries, like Indonesia and Chile have just slowed down. The cut US jobs will just be redeployed into the Asia area. Look, it's been happening every year since at least 2000. Why would you expect it to change or not accelerate? The price is that moral leadership is gone. It's now leadership by fear! Thursday, May 7, 2009 Honeywell management has obviously forgotten that the rank and file employees are the ones that actually make the money for this company. Once you get beyond the factory floor the burden begins, up to and including the biggest burden of all....executive staff. Yet the rank and file are the ones who continue to sacrifice to satisfy management greed and compensate for 'leadership' incompetence. While the sacrifices for the rest of us come almost daily, what has Cote given up? Has he eliminated his private jet yet? Of course not. None of this is his problem. He exists apart from the rest of us. After the millions he receives in pay does he really need Honeywell to compensate him $60,000 for life insurance? Heck no. But he takes it because in his mind 'he deserves it.' And nobody says differently, least of all the zombies on the board of directors. Wednesday, May 6, 2009 Today's news: Starting 1 September 2009, Honeywell will no longer subsidize medical insurance coverage for people who retire under the legacy retirement plan -- about 15% of Honeywell employees. Now there's an incentive for competent, experienced folks to retire soon! The really ironic thing is the explanation in the letter they sent out -- the economy just keeps getting worse and worse, and we have to do this to avoid layoffs. But in other communications, they claim that they expect things to start turning around by the end of the year, again "to avoid layoffs". So clearly, they've used the current short-term situation to justify longer-term reduced benefits for people who retire before they're eligible for Medicare. And if the economy doesn't improve soon, we'll be having layoffs anyway. I figure the "savings" will start in the next couple of years, peak at about $50M/year in a few years, then tail off as more legacy employees hit age 65. It's the gift that just keeps on giving. Heck, in a good year, it might even cover Dave Cote's compensation! The MBAs who come up with this stuff obviously went to the Rahm Emanuel School -- "Never let a good crisis go to waste." And, Oh by the way, your employee satisfaction surveys will be coming out soon. Wednesday, May 6, 2009 I just thought that some of you would like to know: Clearly, the economic climate is getting worse. We're seeing incredible slowing, and it's looking like the worst recession in half a century. We're doing everything possible to avoid a repeat of the 2000-2002 recession, when we had 31,000 company-wide layoffs. We have left jobs unfilled, eliminated salary increases for most band 4 and above employees, implemented short-term furloughs, and cut expenses everywhere and for everything. Even with these actions and the $700 million plus in restructuring over the past three years, it's not enough, and more cost actions are required. Consequently, we will be eliminating the retiree medical subsidy for current employees. Should you retire after September 1, 2009, Honeywell will no longer subsidize retiree medical coverage for you. This change does not affect those employees already retired or those who retire by September 1, 2009. In order to retire by September 1, 2009, you must apply for retirement by July 31, 2009. While this is a difficult decision, we believe this action is less disruptive to our employees and the company than other options because it allows employees who are eligible to retire to choose to do so, while preserving jobs for many others. Additionally, no one will lose access to health care coverage. Employees can either continue to participate in our company-provided health care plan, or retire before the deadline and receive a subsidy. Additionally, we still plan to provide access to group insurance at competitive company rates for pre-65 retirees who leave the company after September 1. Our group coverage rate is generally less expensive than individual coverage currently available in the marketplace. Group insurance can assist employees under the age of 65 bridge the gap until they are eligible for other options through Medicare. But ---- "Cote received $422,666 in other compensation, including $155,577 for his use of company aircraft, which he is contractually obliged to use for travel. Additionally, Honeywell reimbursed him $62,000 for the annual premium of a $10 million life insurance policy." Tuesday, May 5, 2009 Your observations about the glut of MBAs in the post-Allied (aka "blue") era is correct. I remember talking to a director shortly after the so-called "merger of equals" was announced who said "It's going to be a completely different kind of company". He'd already looked into the mouth of the beast. What was not publicly known, but widely understood at management levels within Honeywell, is that the GE Integration Team had put together a comprehensive integration plan. The GE-ization of Honeywell would have wreaked havoc with organizational structure, creating larger chunks of business with the same or leaner management, but with GE people in key positions. All the other GE nonsense would follow, including six sigma, the "bottom 10 percent" system of "topgrading" the workforce, and the much-touted "digitization" of whatever could be reduced to an intranet site to eliminate people. (Surely no one ever thought Bossidy came up with this crap as an original idea, did they?) All these programs sound familiar because after GE was forced to practice merger interruptus, the damaged Honeywell "leadership" staff went ahead and implemented most of the GE integration plan anyway. So many key people had left or been run out by GE and the what was left of the old Honeywell had been so beat-up by pointy-haired Allied types, that even the stupidest changes were accepted with resignation. The main difference between then and now is there were more co-workers to be demoralized. The sum GE had to pay for not going through with the merger was a cheap price to invasively learn the secrets of a competitor, and then leave it a crippled breeding-ground for bad ideas. Monday, May 4, 2009 In Nature, when the fruit is plentiful the big ape would swing into the trees and eat all that he can eat; he would take over the troop and control it with an iron fist. As soon as the fruit was getting low on the trees, this ape left the group to join another. Now the rank-and-file would move out to find better feeding grounds, but with a lesser leader who usually lost to another bigger ape who has moved out of a failing troop. You can find these facts in National Geographic. Or, you can take a look at Honeywell management. Monday, May 4, 2009 In my opinion it all started to go to hell in a hand cart when they hired the first "MBAs". When they arrived, it must have seemed like all their prayers had been answered; there we all were like a rain forest of employees. There they all were like a team of Brazilian tree loggers working double shifts to pay off the loans on their brand new chain saws. The old guard management who understood the business but not the dynamics of running a business hired them with promises of "Fast Track Promotion", the MBAs performed as only MBAs can and hacked the company to pieces; after all why have three people doing three jobs when you can force one person to do all three jobs. I guess the old guard management crapped themselves when they saw the desolation left behind, because the MBAs never saw any sign of the "Fast Track" they certainly were not going to promote them to high positions and suffer the same fate. So, eventually they moved on. This kinda screwed it up for the next lot of MBAs, because when they came along there was not a lot left for them to perform their miracles on. They too did not see any sign of the "Fast Track". Next came the Allied Signal fiasco. A supposed merger. But, when Allied looked around they too saw that there was not much they could do with the business. By then, we were just a field of telegraph poles with very few branches to trim back. Bossidy jumped ship, leaving the clown Bonsignore in charge, and he couldn't manage to take a dog for a walk without losing it. After a short period in the doldrums, we heard about United Technology attempting to buy the company. Then out of the blue GE arrived. The story was that Jack Welch faxed Bonsignore a hand written a note saying GE wanted to buy the company. Bonsignore contacted Jack Welch and said "Why Not?" and he made the deal. Honeywell started applying the GE management model by making management lay offs prior to the buyout. When the deal fell through, we were left with a flat management structure and lack of key management. Boy, did those layoffs ever bite us in the ass. Then Big "D" arrived; within a short time all of the management were just following orders. There is no individuality within the Honeywell management; they are too frightened to offer any sort of opinion, and their one goal is chasing quarterly figures to please Morris Town. The pursuit of "Organic Growth" seems like a good idea. But, what is the point of planting new seeds when you do not make the effort to cultivate what already exists? I still do not under stand outsourcing. The need to outsource just means that you cannot effectively do the job yourselves. Has anybody actually seen a spreadsheet that proves beyond doubt that outsourcing saves money? Honeywell is also internally de-skilling its self by outsourcing engineering. Pretty soon there will not be enough skilled engineers left to satisfy new build contracts. How will Homeland Security or Boeing feel when engineers from India or China appear to work on a new contract in a high security area? Take note because it is not that far away. As for big "Dave's" pay rises and bonuses, I am sure that president Obama will be keeping a close eye on CEOs pay checks, especially those that he has met. Sunday, May 3, 2009 Let's face it, Honeywell is falling apart. In order to prop up the share price management is making short-term non-sustainable decisions. Cutting costs works well to begin with but then you start hurting the future of the business. The share price may be holding its own now but this time next year everyone will be rating it as junk status. Friday, May 1, 2009 I think you are reading a different blog board to this one. Nobody has said anything about everybody making the same amount of money. You have missed the point of the posts, I will summarise so that you do not have to try and read the board again...
Friday, May 1, 2009 I think the point that the other person was trying to make is that we (the lowly employees) have sacrificed or have been riffed, and this CEO got a 55% bonus and has made no attempt to give anything back or show that he is also sacrificing to help the company. So your excuse for his behavior holds no water with me. Great managers lead by example, but he comes from the Jack Welch school of management where the CEO comes first - not the company. I'm fortunate in that I'm almost at retirement age and won't have to put up with this much longer. Friday, May 1, 2009 So much unhappiness and despair. If you want to make a big paycheck, like a Fortune 500 exec, then go earn it! Do you think that if you anonymously wail about it in this blog, or around the water cooler when you're sure you're safe, that magically you'll get paid more and Cote will get paid less? If you want everyone to get paid the same where you work, move to a Communist state! If you don't like a capitalist market where share price and profitability are king, then leave America! Wednesday, April 29, 2009 So they tell us to take 10 days unpaid. This is so they don't have to do layoffs. You know this would have a lot more meaning if they just waited a few weeks before they start laying off people. But alas, layoff's are now in full swing and my guess is there will be over a hundred laid off before end of May; but if you a betting person they may hit that number before the end of this month. Wednesday, April 29, 2009 April 30, last days for about 40 Honeywell workers out of 65. Production, R&D and Quality are moving. Lead time changed from 5 days to 15 and 20 days. We tell customers that this re-organisation will not affect orders. Yeah right. Inside Sales and Service must takes more calls due to increasing lead times. Errors are being made since we changed 10 years old experienced technicians for brand new people that have no clue what they are doing. Where is the efficiency in that? Where do we offer better product and service to customers? The only good this change does is to get more money is manager pocket such as Cote. Sunday, April 26, 2009 Since the Allied takeover, Honeywell has continued to remove the small things that contributed to the level of job satisfaction for many employees. Who cares if employees are unhappy as long as Cote and Wall Street are cozy? Routine maintenance is ignored or delayed. Light bulbs don't get changed. Janitorial service is reduced. Recognition dinners are cancelled. Cafeterias are closed. Travel is nearly impossible. Cell phones are cancelled. Raises are 0%. Mandatory days without pay. But Dave Cote still gets a 55% compensation increase, the use of a private jet, and reimbursed for his life insurance policy. The only way to exist is to pinch your nose and close your eyes. Job satisfaction? Ha! Not in this company. Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Internal email extract. It starts out by saying that a few million dollars has been spent on retirement parties/life events etc... We understand that recognizing these occasions is important to our friends and co-workers. Personal gestures are a part of building a strong workplace community. So while we encourage employees to recognize occasions that matter to their co-workers, any associated costs should be covered by individual contributions, rather than by the company. The desire of our employees to support their co-workers is one of the reasons Honeywell is a great place to work. We encourage employees to continue acknowledging important occasions for co-workers while adhering to the company’s travel and expense policy. This will help us reduce indirect spend while building a positive work environment. So we are still allowed to have a retirement party but we must pay for it ourselves. This is crazy. Next they will be telling us that the company bathrooms are pay-per-use. Tuesday, April 14, 2009 We have cut back to the level of incompetence now. Here in Springfield we had one person who knew the EDI system. On Friday, they let her go. How stupid is that?! Now we have someone coming from across the state to try and help us out. That person is only going to be here for 1 day, because Honeywell is too cheap to let them have a hotel room, or to pay another $70 for an extra days car rental. Fortune 100 company? If we are then either the company is going bankrupt or the "insert expletive here" in New Jersey are sucking us dry. Either way, we will not be here very long. Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Now we are reaching crisis point. They have got rid of so many talented people that the rest of us are getting overworked. We are getting more project requests because more less skilled people are having to try and do skilled jobs and they are making mistakes; costly mistakes. Saturday, April 11, 2009 Sensing and Control is running out of money rapidly and upper management does not want to pour the profits into it to keep it afloat. S&C has until the end of the year to show some turnaround - otherwise corporate will announce a "refocusing on our core business" and either sell it or dismantle it. Friday, April 10, 2009 I am on a programming project (yes we still have them) and I am amazed at the incompetence of the management. We have had several pieces of source code overwritten due to the outsourced sysadmins being lazy. We have also had 2 people working on the same piece of source code and overwriting each others changes. Management says "well we have source control", but unfortunately we are not allowed to use it properly. Instead of using it to check in and out working code they use it to manage the move from test to production. We have a test system that has been set up very differently from production (we have those great outsourced sysadmins to thank for that) so that the code needs to know which machine it is on before it will work properly. We have almost no comments in the code and we have people changing the basic design on the fly. In short, it is a real mess. Management has no clue how to run a coding project and I am the only one with any major coding experience on the whole team (Honeywell got rid of it brains a few years ago). This project is one huge train wreck. My hope is that it gets canceled before we have to deploy it and maintain it. Maybe I will find another job soon? I am definitely looking. Does anyone want to hire a software engineer? Friday, April 10, 2009 I just thought that some of you would like to know: "Cote received $422,666 in other compensation, including $155,577 for his use of company aircraft, which he is contractually obliged to use for travel. Additionally, Honeywell reimbursed him $62,000 for the annual premium of a $10 million life insurance policy." Can I use the company aircraft too? Or do i have to go to my 2 week unpaid vacation on the bus this year?
You can find the whole report at: Thursday, April 9, 2009 Attention, anyone in or near Rockford, IL. WTVO Channel 17 is interested in hearing about the recent layoffs and the movement of production to China/Mexico. Contact their news desk if you want to talk to them about it. Wednesday, April 8, 2009 Honeywell is going to be moving the production of more product lines to China over the next 12 months. The North American layoffs have already started. Wednesday, April 8, 2009 I am voting with my resume and actively looking for another job. The moment I find one I will be out of here. I have worked for a few different companies and I have to say that Honeywell is the worst. Tuesday, April 7, 2009 I think that we need to get more pointed in our assessment and discussion of Honeywell management practices. Cote doesn't give a darn about your comments here - unless you riot on the streets of Morristown or you vote with your shares. There is little chance of this happening. They love your Honeywell stock prices too much. So, put up or shut up! What is more insidious is Honeywell action under the surface - what you don't see. Monday, April 6, 2009 - link sent by ex-Honeywell (laid off due to outsourcing):
From CNN-Money: 10 biggest CEO Paychecks
Total compensation: $28.7 million 2008 salary: $1.8 million Bonus: $17.5 million Perks: $422,666 Stock grants: $0 Stock options: $9 million Honeywell's 2008 sales rose 6% to $36.6 billion, a result that helped Cote collect a $17.5 million bonus. Saturday, April 4, 2009 Hmmm... 10% reductions in pay for most exempt employees; but still no indication that Dave Cote would even consider forgoing any of his 55% increase. This guy just doesn't get it. Friday, April 3, 2009 I see that there is a lot of animosity towards MBAs. The MBA is not the problem per se. The problem are all the wrong expectations based on this degree. You can be a bright person with an MBA, but this is only a tool for helping you achieve good (or outstanding results) quicker, but it does not substitute the experience you have to have in an industry. Companies can value this degree, but not believe that anyone with an MBA can make the difference. Also a good level of humbleness and real ability to work with a team and learn from people with more experience than you is crucial. Only after you can add your MBA on top of that and try to make the difference. Only after that. Thursday, April 2, 2009 The problem we have here is that you are not seeing the management in their true light. These people have MBA's and should be treated with respect. Actually, these people at best are like monkeys in a zoo; fun to watch. I am responsible for creating some of these spreadsheets, and some are just flights of fancy. Some managers take these numbers and do something meaningful with them (less that 1%). The rest just like to look at the pretty pictures. Every now and then I change the title on the spreadsheets, and you can just see the confusion taking place. The data remains the same, but the poor things are so lost and confused you just want to hold them and feel sorry for them. Moving the columns around - now that is cruel; but damn, its funny..... Thursday, April 2, 2009 What has happened is that we have gone from "management by thinking" to "management by spreadsheet". If we were still using "management by thinking" we would see that the short term cost reductions are killing our future potential. It would be obvious because the people doing the thinking would be people who know the business and the industry as a whole. They would have had experience on the shop floor doing the job that they are now managing. Now that we have "management by spreadsheet" it is easy to hire an MBA from outside. They do not have to know the business or even be able to spell "widget", all they have to be able to do is to put numbers into a spreadsheet. There is no thinking required, numbers are down is bad and numbers are up is good. Unless your magic numbers take into account the time an entire IT team has to do nothing while it is waiting for an outsourced group to do something you will never know that the money you saved by outsourcing is being eaten up by lack of quality by the outsourced company. The "management by thinking" would have spotted this a long time ago and may even have predicted it, the "management by spreadsheet" will never spot it or will spot the performance decrease but attribute it to something else. A spreadsheet is a tool, it is only as good as the person operating it. In the hands of someone who knows what they are doing it can be very powerful, in the hands of a child with an MBA it is dangerous. Monday, March 30, 2009 - Re: "It's a well known macro-economic principle that all business will ultimately migrate to the area of lowest marginal cost." True, assuming that the model captures all costs. However, the story we're given is that business migrates to low cost only because the hourly costs are less. In pursuit of this we've seen projects handed to inexperienced graduates who are called 'experts', followed by flawed product designs, do-overs, unworkable production equipment, incompetent project management, missed program schedules, missed revenue streams, poor quality, lost customers, etc. What is the cost of this? Apparently nothing, because even though this has gone on for several years, management still persists in following this path while the list of mistakes and goof-ups keeps climbing every day. Those who watch this charade and have the experience to understand the impact of these mistakes realize this is not a sustainable model. But our concerns fall on deaf ears, while publicly the suits maintain they've found the holy grail. It gives every appearance of management making a decision, and then "adjusting the books" (or looking only at selective data) to create supporting evidence. It would be hard enough to see US jobs lost if this model really worked. But it is intolerable to continually see jobs lost in pursuit of a model that has repeatedly failed. Management's stubborn inability to acknowledge their mistakes only exacerbates the problem. There is no question this has played a part in the recent decision to require employees to take time off without pay. The only thing that seems to be going smoothly is the endless transfer of money to Cote's bank account. You tell me where the disconnect is. Monday, March 30, 2009 It's a well known macro-economic principle that all business will ultimately migrate to the area of lowest marginal cost. The USA has not yet fit this bill for many years. So why doesn't the collective US of A get really smart! Everyone, in unison, should say that we will all collectively take a 40-50% salary and benefits cut. If all do it, prices will come down and everything will be the same relatively speaking - but more competitive globally. Of course, I was having a bad dream. With the systemic greed in the USA, this will never happen. Just look at Congress - old fat grey cats that bitch more that old women in rage on motorcycles - can't agree on anything. Obama should kick ass so that every CEO in the USA will quiver in his/her boots. GM's Wagner is gone. The same CEO dismissals should happen in all the banks. Terminate them all and start with a clean slate. Monday, March 30, 2009 I'm no Honeywell apologist. But it could easily be argued that all of Honeywell's non-suited resources (i.e. everyone who's not in management, finance or marketing) in the USA are doomed anyway. If taking a 10% pay cut, or two weeks compulsory unpaid leave, or whatever, will buy them all a year or two of time to find a new job while the economy hopefully recovers, is that such a bad thing? Why do I say this? Read what the pundits are saying about America's auto industry (5c summary: Let It Fail, let the manufacturing jobs cascade down to Japan, Korea and China, and retrain the auto workers to do something else - though what exactly that something else might be is never credibly stated). The arguments they make for GM and Chrysler are word for word equally applicable to anything Honeywell makes or does, with the possible exception of bits of Specialty Materials (e.g. I can't see the DOE outsourcing its uranium refining to China or Korea anytime soon). Honeywell is scarcely the only company to have reached this position. Microsoft, IBM, Apple, a dozen (or a hundred) others are at various places down the black ski-slope. Hate to say it but a real world-scale war (I guess a cold war might do) is the only thing that will likely create sufficient trade barriers to bring local industries back into existence. Monday, March 30, 2009 To all who don't think this is a big deal
Friday, March 27, 2009 So Honeywell HPS wants its employees to think globally as one of the 12 key behaviors, LOL. And yet they announced an across-the-board 10% pay cut only for US employees. I guess that they forget about all the jobs they outsourced? It appears that none of these new Honeywell employees needed to sacrifice along with the US employees, for the good of Honeywell execs making their bonuses. Figures. I guess the excuse is that only the US allows Honeywell to screw its employees at the drop of a hat, so they took advantage of what they could get. Despite the above, I am not overly upset about the whole thing. You would have had to be a blind man (or a Honeywell Executive) not to see this coming. HPS is a trailing indicator that is reflecting last November, right on schedule. I could hardly control my laughter earlier this year, when execs were blathering about what a good year 2008 was, and how we were a new Honeywell that would push strongly ahead through 2009 while other lesser companies withered. (Who do they have writing their material? It's a real hoot!) Did anyone else, but me, notice that the 10% pay decrease for two quarters roughly cancels that bonus they gave you for doing such a bang up job last year? When I was listening to the blathering about the great 2008, I couldn't help but think to myself that there was no way I would get a bonus for it. So I was actually pleasantly surprised to receive a nice bonus... um ... but even before it appears in my paycheck, they are letting me know that I will be giving it back, and then some - for the sake of the company. That's swell guys. As the previous bloggers have speculated, I should now be holding my breath for the announcement that Dave Cote is giving back his bonus. I am preparing the best I can for more, probably much more, bad news to come. Only the truly gullible could believe this will be the end of it. The economy is bad, and it will show Honeywell management for the posers they are. Lacking any real business skill, their only option will be to slash and burn, hoping for better times. Friday, March 27, 2009 Honeywell announced in NY today that we will have 2 unpaid weeks spread out in 2 quarters. We will stay home unpaid. This will prevent us from collecting unemployment. What pisses me off is Cote and others will be sure to make millions in bonuses/stock options. Time to look for a new job. Friday, March 27, 2009 ACS gets a 10% decrease in hours and pay for ALL employees (salary and hourly). The last time there was a recession Honeywell fell apart and it looks like the same thing is happening again. Thursday, March 26, 2009 For this jingoism, "The Year of Procurement", Cote gets a 55% increase? Not only is he bankrupt of new ideas, but the board of directors have lost their minds. Check my math please. At ~$30 million compensation, Cote is receiving 1/1000th of the total sales of the company. Nice piggybank. No wonder there aren't even crumbs left for the rest of the employees. Wednesday, March 25, 2009 Well Dave Cote has announced that, for Sensing and Control this year will be "The Year of Procurement". What does that mean? It means that we do not have the talent to create something new, so we are going to buy up companies with new stuff, move the manufacturing to China and stick our label on it. In the meantime we will dismantle the company we purchased and let all of its employees go (unless they leave in disgust first). Saturday, March 21, 2009 As a point of comparison: David Cote is CEO of a $35 billion company and David Farr is CEO of a $25 billion company. Please see the following:
Tuesday, March 17, 2009 Hopefully with the way the economy is at the moment, Honeywell will change to a new management and new management style. But alas, methinks that the only thing that will change will be the head (Cote); the status quo will remain. None of Cote's underlings has the faintest idea about how to run a company. Though, at this moment in time they will all be putting their names in the hat. Good luck to us, the Honeywell people! Monday, March 16, 2009 I guess that Cote will bail Honeywell in the same way he abandoned TRW. Monday, March 16, 2009 I agree about the financial situation at Honeywell. If the management style does not change things should get very interesting in 2011. Monday, March 16, 2009 - RE: Cote poll: I say that he will not forego his pay increase because he does not care about his employees. That can be seen by the way he is replacing them with contracts. Sunday, March 15, 2009 - RE: Cote poll: No, Cote will not forego his pay increase, because he sees Honeywell as a cash cow and nothing more than that. He is going to retire when the decisions that have been made over the past few years catch up with the company. When things start to go downhill he will bail out, take a very large parachute and leave the company to go under. I give him no more than 2 years due to the current financial situation within the company. Saturday, March 14, 2009 "Leadership by example." Well, there's a concept. Let's start an informal poll. The question is: Will Dave Cote forego a compensation increase?
Saturday, March 14, 2009 You got 2%? I got 0% - that's right, zero percent. In fact everyone here got nothing for a raise this year. Now the HR department is threatening to drop medical coverage for my kids because my spouse had them from a previous relationship. Of course Dave Cote's going to get a 55% merit increase, he screwed it out of the rest of us by pulling stuff like this. I sometimes wonder how bad the financial situation is at Honeywell. We hear the talk of how well we did last year and how poised we are to do better than most companies this year but I do not see that reflected in reality. We cannot buy any more office supplies until April; a hiring freeze; no (or little) merit raises; buildings that are falling apart, and that smell of mold during a rainstorm; a travel freeze; reducing benefits. All of those are signs of a company under severe financial hardship. I am moving what little Honeywell stock I have to other companies, I don't want it to end up worthless. I suggest you do the same, Honeywell is heading for a big crash. Look at the banks and others that have gone under - what did the executive staff get that final year? A huge "merit raise". What did Dave get this year? A huge "merit raise". See the connection? Advice to anyone reading this blog: stay away from Honeywell, they will screw you out of the benefits, retirement plan, salary and anything else they can. Saturday, March 14, 2009 Check the web for last Thursday's news - Dave Cote's 2008 compensation was "up nearly 55 percent from 2007". But things were a lot leaner in our organization, with the merit increase budget for our organization somewhere around 2%. I'm not in favor of government-imposed limitations on executive compensation, nor do I begrudge business owners and or talented corporate CEOs salaries commensurate with their company's performance. But according to the article, "about half of that increase was merit-based". So, just what did Dave Cote do during 2008 that would merit this increase? Maybe it was driving the Honeywell stock price from $62 down to $26. And will the extra 55% incentivize Dave to perform at even higher levels during 2009? I'm sure that Mr. Cote would argue that his $30M+ is a drop in the bucket, and did not significantly affect Honeywell's bottom line. But productive employees supproting a family on slightly lower pay would contend that something a little better than 2% on their $40k salary probably also wouldn't break the bank. One would hope that Mr. Cote would recognize what a poor appearance this makes. Practice a little leadership by example, and voluntarily forego any comensation increase. C'mon Dave, by making that sort of bold move, you'd demonstrate some personal integrity, and maybe inspire Honeywell employees world-wide to appreciate their jobs and work a little harder. And you'll still be able to scrape by. Wednesday, March 11, 2009 Jack Welch just happened to come along at a time when there was such a thing as "low hanging fruit." So Jack picked it. And Wall Street revered Jack as a modern day corporate genius. Jack gives interviews. Writes books. Every CEO wannabe wants to be Just Like Jack. Follow in his footsteps to realize their own visions of corporate "success." Soon the low hanging fruit is gone. What to do next? Promises have been made. Goals are set. Uh oh. Wall Street is demanding results. Who is more important, investors or employees? At least Jack had a few original ideas. But the Jack Wannabe's had nothing. Empty pockets; empty suits. Understanding the business and finding creative ways to remain competitive was #1. Beyond the leadership abilities of the GE infiltrators. Not part of the perceived global solution of offshoring everything possible. Panic begins to set in. "Leadership" exerts rigid control over everything, believing that in this way they can wring every last bit of profit from the workforce. In so doing, they also remove flexibility, creativity, and innovation. Discouraged and demoralized employees soon realize they are nothing but pawns on a chessboard with no idea of the game being played, and no control over it. Buying new companies and headcount reduction eventually becomes the pathway to making the numbers instead of organic growth and new technology development. David Cote hasn't had a fresh idea since he was installed. Much was promised. Little has been delivered. Unless you count hosting a company-wide meeting from Monte Carlo as "delivering." In fairness, Cote was not the only CEO wannabe caught in this trap. But he and others like him who blindly followed Jack's lead have collectively destroyed manufacturing in the US. Hopefully, one day there will be an accounting, similar to what's going on now with the banking and insurance meltdown. Perhaps then, instead of basking in the warm glow after introducing the president, Cote will get a chance to explain to congress and the nation how he helped trade away the economic vitality of the US in exchange for a few pieces of silver, all because he didn't have a better idea. Tuesday, March 10, 2009 If you are with Callidus Technologies, kiss your kahunas good-bye. It's a Honeywell disease. Honeywell will pick you apart - by using Six Sigma tools and telling you that you don't have a Global mindset (eg: S&C). Suggest that you get smart, start your own business and take the core business away from Honeywell. Act fast! The Honeywell, ex AlliedSignal, ex GE management style is dead. Just look at the stock market. The stock market is the true judge of the effectiveness of the GE style. Unfortunately Honeywell (blue) is infested with the GE philosophy - starting from the top. The reality is that GE stock is now below $9.00/share from its high of about $60. I expect that it will even head lower. This is poetic justice for the Jack Welch "straight from the gut", which historians will recount as questionable. Jack was no miracle for GE. He just happened to lead the company when all stock market tides were rising - as did GE. So, like in hockey, When there is dismal performance by the players, get rid of the coach (Cote) - and a lot of other VP's in Aerospace, which is the true engine for Honeywell. Honeywell's stock is at approx $25 from approx $60 a loss of over 30%. Please don't fell sorry for these individuals. They have done well in the past and will not be eating dog food. They will be eating your pay increase, though. Come on you guys & gals - lets hear your opinions in raw form. There are Honeywell executives that look at this website. Give them the message and send their heads spinning! You are anonymous. Monday, March 9, 2009 Honeywell just took over Callidus Technologies and is now in the middle of ripping it apart. They are so sneaky, but any smart person can read in between the lines. It is sad to see Callidus, that was a very good, Christian family company, get sidetracked by greed and sell to Honeywell. Now all the people who worked their butts off from the beggining are the ones being cut or harrassed. No one is to be trusted from this company, whether they are there for integration or contracted! Friday, March 6, 2009 Very well said. The real irony was that those obscure, power-hungry new-hires used the argument that local management was too "Freeport-centric" and therefore could not possibly be capable of providing leadership in the 'new economy.' So, without even bothering to understand the nature of the business they inherited, the ex-GE new hires systematically removed the very people who had turned that business into an industry leader. What followed has been nothing but a comedy of errors leading to a continuous downward spiral. When local voices tried to speak up, they were immediately shut down with the accusation that they 'don't have a global mindset.' Translation: Go away. Shut up. Quit bothering me. It's an exceptional individual who can take a sow's ear and turn it into a silk purse. But it takes today's Honeywell management to turn a silk purse into a sow's ear. Thursday, March 5, 2009 The reason the damage is so obvious at Sensing and Control is because this business was allowed to operate for 50 years as an autonomous business, after being acquired by Honeywell in 1950. The wise leaders of "the big red H" allowed local management, based in Freeport, IL to create a climate of world-class excellence. This is not just opinion, in fact S&C was unquestionably qualified, based on objective assessment by independent examiners, to win the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award in the late 1990s. Then came the Allied Signal takeover, and soon thereafter, the GE Fiasco. (Yes, the GE whose stock is now worth 1/4 of HON). GE didn't/wasn't allowed to buy Honeywell, but the seeds of their toxic management style found fertile ground, and the handwriting was on the wall. After decades of innovation, growth, and consistently profitable success, the GE integration plan was essentially put in place, even though the merger failed to come to fruition. Pieces of S&C were united with pieces of other Honeywell businesses which had nothing in common, only to be taken apart a year later. Leaders who understood the business, customers, and technologies who had been faithful stewards of the profitable S&C enterprise for decades were eliminated, and power was shifted to a series of obscure ex-GE new hires whose opinions of themselves were only exceeded by their thirst for power and political gamesmanship. After 50 years as a self-managed, highly successful, industry leader that was described by Jack Welch himself as "a crown jewel of Honeywell", S&C was finally "integrated". And that's why those of us who know, and lived, this history are so angry and frustrated. No doubt that other more recently acquired companies share the same emotions and equally proud heritage. We all once worked in thriving, industry-leading, profitable businesses with motivated employees and happy customers. (Honeywell doesn't buy broken-down wrecks). Now, we see our company slipping further and further behind competition, flailing to accomplish tasks that were once commonplace and easy, watching inexperienced engineers in foreign "centers of excellence" produce flawed products under the supervision of incompetent "Managers By Accident" who decimate the workforce while positioning themselves for the next job and bonus. If we sound bitter, it's because we remember when S&C was managed by strong, competent, caring, fully-invested managers in Freeport Illinois who put their hearts and souls into making this business the very best it could be. Tuesday, March 3, 2009 Less than 10 years ago you could look around S&C and see excellence wherever you looked. Generally, product design and manufacturing engineering were efficient operations. The workforce was experienced and knew how to get things done quickly and well. Now you look around S&C and see an emaciated disaster. Offshoring has worked only if there is no regard for the future and only if you want to claim short-term paper savings as a "success." The offshore workforce is inexperienced, and the inefficiency is appalling. Products are late and have serious technical problems. Manufacturing engineering's ability to solve technical production problems is pathetic. Chinese engineers fresh out of college are told they are "experts", and then unbelievably are treated that way. Meanwhile, the few true experts left stateside continue to be abused and disrespected in a never-ending succession of slights and take-aways. I'll believe corporate management is serious about making money when I see the exec's flying coach, tightening their belts, and enduring the same draconian existence as the rest of us. Monday, March 2, 2009 Well lets see now... Honeywell does not controls its servers, IBM does that. Honeywell does not control its databases, IBM does that. Honeywell does not control its desktops or laptops, Dell does that. Honeywell does not control its network, IBM does that (or AT&T). Honeywell does not control its firewalls, some third party does that. Now that they are moving to SAP, Honeywell will no longer control its applications either. Honeywell's helpdesk is outsourced to India, its manufacturing is in China. What is left in the USA? Just overpaid executives who are sucking the company dry and destroying its future for short term stock gains. I am in IT in Honeywell and I am getting out because Honeywell is no longer a technology company. Honeywell no longer innovates - that is too expensive. Honeywell buys innovations from small companies, bleeds them dry, destroys the company and moves the manufacturing overseas. Honeywell used to have skill; real, technical skill. Now it has children with MBA's, spreadsheets and no future. Look out Illinois, more layoffs are scheduled for March. Monday, March 2, 2009 SAP seems to be the big killer of company operations and customer relations for sales and order processing while it is being implemented. Has any body got a comment to make? Hope its all worth it in the end. Monday, March 2, 2009 - Response to the SAP job query: There are positions within the SAP project but they are not SAP. Those jobs are for SAP employees, Honeywell has Projects and these are paperwork projects, you will get very little hands on experience with SAP. IT people who will assist in DATA transfer to SAP will be given no SAP training. IT people will not be involved in the day to day support of SAP. Saturday, February 28, 2009 - Response to the SAP job query: SAP is currently being implemented all over Honeywell. Your SAP job will be safe for a couple of years as it is going to take a while to get everybody on it. However, once everybody is using SAP the maintenance of the software is going to be outsourced to India and then you can kiss your job goodbye. If you want a job for a couple of years then go for it, if you want a career then find something else. Friday, February 27, 2009 Would anyone recommend taking an SAP position within Honeywell? Seems to me that the majority of tech-type workers are either consultant/contract and/or foreign bodies. It almost seems as though the minute an American accepts a position within that area (that is not executive), you have a giant target on your back that screams, REPLACE ME with someone cheaper. Thursday, February 26, 2009 With regards to FTE, this is the main process control network for thousands of installed Honeywell DCS systems. Monday, February 23, 2009 Can anybody shed some light on Honeywell FTE network, the marketting claims they make were decade ago, has any body taken up on that?? Thursday, February 19, 2009 Six Sigma Company? In what way? I have been working here for 3 years now and the only time I ever saw Six Sigma was on one of my projects, and that was the one I had to do to get the certification. None of the other projects we deal with have even the slightest hint of Six Sigma about them. Come to think of it, if someone documents anything it is a miracle and usually results in the document getting lost in the thousands of team rooms and online folders used to store stuff. The system used for tracking projects is called "Word" and "Excel". How pathetic can you get? I bet some moron with an MBA decided that Word and Excel will do, then found the cost of a very expensive project tracking package and said that their decision "saved the cost of this package". Their quarterly stats looked good and they got promoted to "Chief Moron". Thursday, February 19, 2009 I find it amazing that a Fortune 100 company can spend so little on its own employees. I feel like I am working for the local housing commission instead of for a multinational billion dollar company. I have worked at several companies during my career both large and small and these are the worst conditions I have ever had to put up with. The employees that are left have been working at Honeywell for so long that they no longer know what a real company should provide. They think (or have been told) that this is as good as it gets and that other companies are worse. Monday, February 16, 2009 The People Initiative. Valued employees. People are valued at Honeywell, right? But how does Cote's lofty rhetoric translate into reality? Honeywell values its employees so much that if you travel on company business into an area where the tap water is not safe to drink and you decide to purchase bottled water instead, Honeywell will not reimburse you for the bottled water. It makes one feel so special and so valued. Just part of what makes Honeywell such a unique place to work. Makes one wonder if, when they decide to limit meals to bread and water, will the bread will be reimbursed? Monday, February 16, 2009 Here's the latest... Forget a salary increase, it is likely to be 0-1%. More cost cutting - We are going to have to cut costs by anywhere from 10% to 25% depending upon the function of the department. I guess I am lucky my pen still works, I doubt I would be able to get a new one! Thursday, February 5, 2009 - To the sender of "What a bunch of whiners. Wah, wah, wah": The person that wrote this weblog is an idiot! I apologize for having to use these words, but I speak from experience. I've been at Honeywell for almont 3 decades, and through all levels of the organization, including leadership and management. I'll take you on with any arguement, if you really have the courage. Honeywell has lost its direction. The problem is not the rank and file people, who are highly skilled and committed. Honeywell is successful inspite of its management - not because of it! I don't know how many meetings I have been to with top executives that were worse than going through the "Chineese Water Torture" when it comes to making sensible decisions. The arrival of David Cote was a watershed moment, where all decisions slowly were starting to be centralized. This dictatorship really took place when the company was reorganized into 4 business groups. The big problem is that the individual site managers are now "afraid" of their directors or VPs. There is no room for frank discussion. There is a real effort by site managers to control the communication to their bosses. I have objective evidence on this. I was personally involved in a situation when a VP came to our site and, very affectionly and skillfully, drew from the site leadership team a scoring as to what we thought, and our thoughts for success. Of course, we were trapped in baring our souls, which was a mistake. On the next day, word came through third parties not to be negative, and to contain our comments. Interestly, both the VP and the third party both left the company within 6 months. Because I had a friendship with the third party, so I enquired as to why the person left. The answer was that he/she was tired of the Corporate bullshit. Since they left Honeywell, they started their own business - taking away business from Honeywell. So my message to the "Wah, wah" individual: You are so naive. All you are watching is the stock price, and your own personal selfishness. Since the economic crisis, you have lost 50% from the stock highs. You are better off investing in Walmart. You have no basis for defending Honeywell. Thursday, February 5, 2009 The problem is that we, the "whiners" are the people who came up with the innovations 10 years ago that the company is using to get the profits today. We see an issue with not being allowed or given the opportunity to come up with the innovations today that will keep the company alive for the next 10 years. Honeywell is sowing the seeds of its own destruction by not investing in the talent it has right now. Our technology lead is being eaten away as our competitors catch up with us. The top management are not looking at that, they are just looking at profits. By the time our profits decline to a point where they will take notice it will be too late, our "brains" will either have left the company or been outsourced. Management will have an "innovation drive" but children with MBA's are not good material for solving engineering problems. Six sigma will be thrown at the problem and the result will be piles of paperwork but nothing workable or very creative. Right now Honeywell needs to be looking at new materials, new engineering concepts and new ideas instead of penny pinching and tweaking existing product lines. Right now there is a tactical plan which is to maximize profits. What Honeywell lacks is a strategic plan, one that sees more than 1 or 2 quarters into the future. I am one of the "whiners" and I will be leaving Honeywell, I am already looking and the moment I find something I will be gone. Thursday, February 5, 2009 - Re: "What a bunch of whiners. Wah, wah, wah..." : First, I think that's a very irresponsible comment, given the situation. I am going to assume this person is in upper management or you are just too young. Listen, all the "whiners" are going to leave, and then they are going to come for you. Is very easy to criticize when the ball is not on your court, but wait till it gets there, and believe me it will. On a different note, it was kind of creepy seeing David Cote next to Obama after he met with the CEO's of the most important companies. Kind of tells you who really runs the show in this country, I'll give you a hint: "its not the Government". They probably told Obama Americans need to lower their living standards or else they'll have to leave to other countries. Thursday, February 5, 2009 - To the sender of "What a bunch of whiners. Wah, wah, wah." You didn't send this post on a Honeywell computer since they lock many of us out of the Jimpinto.com website. All your post reveals is that your a new employee and not empathetic. In other words, management material! Thursday, February 5, 2009 "Add value to shareholders"? Please. Spare us. This can be done many ways, some socially and ethically responsible, and some not. Offshoring can be helpful in some cases, and disastrous in others. At the core of the issue is the quarter-to-quarter thinking of most corporate executives, who will sacrifice the future in exchange for the present, since his/her compensation depends on what happens next month, not five years from now. Until this changes, greed and short-sightedness will be the norm. This is not unique to Honeywell, as it pervades the entire industry. Look at Invensys and Rockwell, for example. I think Obama is onto something with rethinking executive compensation, but this is not something the government should have had to mandate - in theory, it should have been done by the boards and compensation committees of these companies. However, since the board members are generally in cahoots with the CEO, and also have a short term view of the world, the system does not work effectively. Carl Icahn, love him or hate him, made a number of great points on CNBC yesterday regarding the importance of an independent (and changeable) board structure. He also (correctly) calls for fundamental reforms to corporate law that allow states like Delaware to create outrageously restrictive legislation that protects greedy boards and CEOs at the expense of shareholders. There is a definite need for major reform in this country, since the animals have proven themselves incapable of running the zoo. I hope there is a middle ground between over-regulation/nationalization and the open-loop system we currently have. Wednesday, February 4, 2009 What a load. Or what a troll. What Honeywell has chosen to do is buy up and rape existing well-run companies, off shore the jobs, and run the companies into the dirt with no regard whatsoever for a sustainable business model. It's a business model based on pure unfettered greed and to hell with the employees. These would be the same employees to whom Cote loves to spew about how valuable they are. "People initiative?" Ha! Pure blatant hypocritical BS. He ought to be ashamed, but I guess when you're focused on hauling down a cool $20 mil you lose your ability to feel shame a long time ago. Add value to the shareholders? Oh yeah. That's cold comfort to the shareholders who happen to also be former employees. Let's see, what's more important to me -- having a job or seeing Honeywell stock go up $1? Change? Change how? If you're not in upper management, the only way you can change is either leave, or else resign yourself to watching your facility be dismantled in front of your eyes until the axe falls on you. Great options, huh? Now that Cote and his banker buds have shown they can't be trusted to self-regulate, and the mood of the country has changed, perhaps we'll see legislation that creates some oversight to control, hinder, or replace these bozos. Wednesday, February 4, 2009 What a bunch of whiners. Wah, wah, wah. It used to be perfect now it stinks. And I remember when bread was a quarter. Change or get trampled. I hope all of you whiners leave Honeywell. The Company is trying to do what public companies do - add value to shareholders. Monday, February 2, 2009 I was sick and tired of requesting something, being told it has been done. My experience was similar. I would tell them it had already been done and didn't work. In any event, I would be told to do it again. In effect , I was being called a liar and that I didn't know what I was talking about (all by people who had extremely limited insight into what was being done). Quite amazing! I left several years ago. Life is much better now. The only thing regretful is I didn't persue a constructive dismissal case as the "They People" had me so stressed out that I couldn't think straight and I am only recovering now. I would always recommend seeking legal advice before doing anything drastic. Monday, February 2, 2009 When I started with Honeywell I was like an IT god; I was the oracle dba, the exchange guru, and all round good guy. I could unlock you in the blink of an eye, give you miracles at the drop of a hat, I used to produce code that could make your spreadsheets sing. Now I sit here twiddling my thumbs, because all this was taken away and given to some outsource company. I have now been reduced to being the go-between the user and helpdesk. Your request directly to help desk will take about 2 days minimum; now with me added to the mix we can add another 5 days to your wait time. I have seen all the other rats jumping ship, so I think its time to get off HMS Honeywell - the iceberg is dead ahead. Friday, January 30, 2009 I am supposed to be a programmer but last year I managed to program a total of 12 lines of code. Most of my time is spent writing business justifications for stuff that is obvious to someone who knows what they are doing. I spend lots of time writing up what needs doing to the servers and then the rest of my time justifying my write up. Any extra time I have is spent on the phone explaining the justification of my writeup to someone who should know better. I am sick and tired of requesting something, being told it has been done and then finding out it either has not been done or has not been done properly and then having to do the whole requesting process again. A change to the system that used to take 2 minutes when we had in-house sysadmins now takes almost 2 days. God forbid you need a security deviation, you might just as well wait for hell to freeze over. I am not impressed with the outsourcing of key parts of the company. It may be cheaper on paper but when you factor in the time that I spend waiting for a change or explaining it to someone who does not speak English very well it becomes very expensive. Back to surfing the internet or reading a book while I am waiting for the change I requested yesterday. Now that is what I call being productive. Friday, January 30, 2009 According to Dave Cote: 2008 sales increased 6% to $36.6 billion from $34.6 billion in 2007. We know this was done on the backs of hardworking employees. So why is it that the majority of employees will be lucky to see an increase of 2%? If you want to improve your performance, then it would be a good idea to motivate the people that generate the growth and the only way to do this is to give them rewards. The rewards better be money, because stupid pieces of paper with your name and some idiot in a management position, has no value at all. Tuesday, January 27, 2009 Read Jim Pinto's 2 items in the latest issue of JimPinto.com eNews, 27 January 2009: Sunday, January 25, 2009 Right. Except you forgot to mention what happens AFTER the purchase of the small companies. Assimilation, layoff of redundant personnel, cost reductions "into the muscle", lack of investment, gradual offshoring of design and manufacturing jobs to India or China (without regard to how well they are performed there) until only a few management positions remain left of what was formerly a thriving business. And another one bites the dust, courtesy of Honeywell. All because Cote doesn't have a better idea. Saturday, January 24, 2009 They are maintaining the profit margin by cutting costs and by aquiring new products and not by creating their own products. They have already cut all of the fat from the company and now they are slicing into the muscle. There are very few research engineers left, most of them have gone to other companies that let them do their job instead of beating them down about costs. This brings about the issue of sustainability. How long can they keep up the profit margin by cutting costs? How long can they keep obtaining new products through aquisitions? At some point they will be left with nothing else to cut and no more small companies to be aquired. When that happens the whole of Honeywell will come to a complete halt. They will not have the people or facilities to make anything new and the old products will be making less and less profit every day. Honeywell is cutting costs today at the expense of a sustainable future. I can understand why, if I was Dave Cote making $19 million per year I wouldn't care where the company was going to be in 5 years. I would make my money, stack it away until the company implodes and then live off it for the rest of my life. At that much money you only need a couple of years worth to be able to retire anyway. We do management by statistics, as long as the stats (metrics) are looking good everyone is happy. It doesn't matter what is really happening as long as the metrics look good. That has been tried before, the old Soviet economies used to use that technique. It didn't work then and it doesn't work now. Friday, January 23, 2009 - re: "10 cents": It's the law of diminishing returns. Spend evermore resources to achieve ever smaller returns. Management's problem is that, in copying Jack Welch's philosophy, all the low hanging fruit is long gone and so is Jack. Nobody has new ideas, they just keep looking for the next 10 cents despite the fact that they spend $1 to get it. They're able to do this by cleverly manipulating metrics to focus on the 10 cents while excluding the costs. And next year it'll be a different metric. Managers keep making their metrics, collecting their bonuses, so everything is cool, right? The sad thing is, none of it has to do with the efficient operation of a factory. Management these days has no feel whatsoever for the businesses they manage. All they do is go through the motions as ordered. It's a non-sustainable model, but it will be pushed right to the day the factories close. Then the economy or "global competition" will be cited as the reason, thereby providing cover for the rats as they desert the ship. Friday, January 23, 2009 - "10 cents people": I don't know if its the MBA mentality or just humans with time on there hands, but if you want to cut cost stop chasing the 10 cents; it's not worth it and it don't make you look smart. Honeywell management seem to think that balancing the numbers to the last penny is a smart thing to do. What they don't realize is that the cost to find it cuts into the bottom line. Getting a low level badly paid admin, assistant to find it is one thing; getting highly paid IT staff and engineers to find it is just plain stupid. One of the other great things Honeywell do is... they want everyone in every department to do metrics, which is all fine and dandy if you love fancy pie-charts that mean nothing. But alas no, that's not what they want. They want all the people in one department to produce the same metric, but they must all look different. Funny thing is that 10 cents is still 10 cents, no matter how many ways you break it up. But then again they don't teach this at MBA daycare. Wednesday, January 21, 2009 The only person Dave Cote cares about is Dave Cote. He chooses to live the lifestyle in the US because he enjoys the standard of living here. And that's where his allegiance ends. The business practices he employs are eliminating US jobs, hurting individuals and families, ruining communities, damaging the manufacturing sector, demoralizing workers, exploiting under-regulated and underpaid overseas resources, and on and on. Cote hides behind the use of the word "global" because it benefits him. If this were a war, he would be considered a traitor. He may not use bombs and bullets, but in slow motion the effects are the same. Tuesday, January 20, 2009 Latest news out of NWIL - They are looking at cutting more jobs from Plant 4 in Freeport in March. Monday, January 19, 2009 I think that all of the Honeywell leadership take a page from Obama's book and contribute at least a day to Community Service. Obama was seen to also tie a shoe lace of another person. David Cote - take a hint! Monday, January 19, 2009 The new speak for 2009 is: "This coming year will be a year of challenges due to the “unstable” economic environment." and my big favourite: "It is essential that we work together as a united team while everyone contributes through a proactive “can do” attitude and optimizes our potential." Now you know and I know that when the hardship is over we will not be part of the team reaping the rewards. Saturday, January 17, 2009 - To those that wanted to know: Severence packages can vary from country to country. For North America, they also vary. If anyone wants to know the US & Canada practices, post the specific question and I'll try to give the info and web links. In both of cases it is based on age, years of service and salary grade and it can vary dramatically. Saturday, January 17, 2009 Bad news for 80 Honeywell workers in the UK. But it's OK, because it's "part of the company's ongoing business practice." They sure got that right. It stopped being about running efficient factories and producing great products a long time ago. Wednesday, January 14, 2009 I'd like to make a comment on Jack Bolick's departure as someone who knows in person, despite the long physical distance, both Jack and his successor. Probably known, but I'm commenting; Jack's retirement was due to health reasons, since he had a serious problem some time ago. He was a great leader, but his successors is suberp person too, with his very impressive UOP background. I'm very optimistic about the future due to synergy he's bringing to HPS. He is a highly energetic person. The only issue for us would be sharing his time & energy with remaining after his VP EMEA position. Wednesday, January 14, 2009 There are still some good engineers left at Honeywell. We just keep our mouths shut and do what our bosses tell us to do. We have all tried to suggest something and been told that either we are wrong, it will be taken into consideration (ignored) or it is out of scope. Trying to push an idea from the bottom is like nailing Jello to the wall. You forgot about the lipstick for the pig, make sure that is in the SIPOC!! Tuesday, January 13, 2009 To those accustomed to how engineering happens at "normal" companies, it is hard to comprehend how poorly engineering resources are utilized at S&C. In a sense, it is similar to the situation with Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. Until one actually reads the 78 pages of complaints against him it is hard to understand how a person could be so arrogant and stupid. To better grasp how the "new" 'Allied' S&C approaches engineering projects, imagine a situation where an engineering team is tasked with developing and executing a plan to win a race. That's Win The Race, not come in second or third. The race is part of a series of races that, if won, will result in prize money, prestige, and future race invitations for the company. In addition, race bettors are promised they will make lots of money if they bet on Honeywell. To keep the analogy simple, assume the race will involve land animals racing over a mile long oval course. The first thing the engineers do is research the speed and distance capabilities of a variety of animals, whether they have the disposition to race, the desire, the stamina, the ability to carry a jockey, the ability to respond to the jockey's directions, and so on. In the old days, an engineer might look at the challenge and note that it sure sounds like a horse race. Now, however, either there are no experienced engineers left, or else their advice is not trusted because they haven't converted their years of experience into Six Sigma PowerPoint presentations. As a result, and due also to the general confusion created by a cross-functional organization structure, no one is able to reach decisions (much less act on them) without first engaging huge teams in endless silly sessions of data gathering. In this case, it involves verifying that a horse is indeed a speedy land animal, that it is capable of carrying a jockey the required distance, that it can follow directions, and that certain breeds excel above others at racing. This takes months of study and analysis. Finally, the engineering team reaches the conclusion that a horse (and not just any horse, it should be a Thoroughbred race horse) is indeed the best animal to enter in the race. But, nay nay, it is no longer good enough to simply advise accountants and upper management to 'buy a race horse'. Instead, a matrix must be constructed that compares a race horse with a variety of other land animals such as the Galapagos tortoise, an ostrich, a miniature poodle, a hog, and an ox. Developing the necessary data and filling out the matrix takes even more time. After all, important comparisons must be made and analyzed. Stating the obvious doesn't work because management no longer has a grasp of the real world. They've never heard of the Kentucky Derby. They've never seen a race horse. Therefore it must be explained to them that the tortoise eats less than the horse, the ox is stronger, the poodle is better looking, and leftover ostrich feathers can be recycled. The pig, however, clearly lacks speed, stamina, and racing ability. It's also very hard to find a saddle for a pig, so the pig is quickly eliminated from serious consideration. Finally, enough rain forests have been sacrificed, precise engineering terminology has been reduced to easily digestible pablum suitable for accountants and upper management, and the verdict is in: The engineering team unanimously recommends the purchase of a Thoroughbred race horse. Despite the delays and paperwork, some engineers still remain eager to purchase the horse and get on with the race. The approvals process begins its slow move up the chain of command and then.....a VP announces that the wrong conclusion has been reached. Either the engineers used the wrong Six Sigma analysis tools or else they were improperly trained in their use. A horse is completely the wrong solution and it will not be purchased. Instead, the VP decrees that the steed of choice is.....the pig. (But thanks anyway, engineering team!) And not just any pig, it must be a Chinese pig. Period. Any animal that comes from North America simply will not be acceptable. (No further explanation is offered, but secretly, engineering wonders whether the VP seriously believes the pig is more streamlined, or whether his Chinese ancestry might have affected his judgment.) As if entering a pig into a race where the competition is certain to be riding horses isn't bad enough, management further complicates matters by choosing the jockey, and to no one's surprise, the jockey is also Chinese. Although he can probably recognize a pig, he has never ridden a pig before (or a horse, for that matter), much less entered a race of any kind. Nevertheless, he is deemed the best choice to ride the pig. Off Honeywell S&C goes, taking its pig to a horse race. The engineers are exhorted to "do whatever it takes to ensure success." Apparently management presumes that the efforts undertaken up to this point were done in order to NOT ensure success. The clear implication is that, from this point forwards, anything less than success will be the fault of engineering. To further "encourage" the engineers, the VP splashes out emails assuring everyone that the pig was a "team" decision. What team? He and the mouse in his pocket? A quick internet search turns up nothing about how to make a pig competitive with a horse. It does, however, reveal info about Chinese racing pigs. A few notable characteristics are reported:
The greatest success for Chinese racing pigs is reported to be where the race is very short and all in a straight line, no turns required. Unfortunately, this does not match the specified race conditions. Meanwhile, management sees no problems and confidently advises the bettors that their special Chinese pig and jockey will win the race. Race day arrives and the contestants load into the starting gate. And they're off. Now it turns out there is yet a fourth kind of pig. Due to the somewhat symmetrical shape of a hog, this pig turned end-for-end as he was put into the gate and loaded backwards. For the pig, it was a cultural preference, plus he wants an extra ration of feed right before the race. Management, watching from the glassed-in confines of the sky-booth, either failed to notice or else believed it was OK simply because it was opposite from how things are done in northern Illinois. It was the jockey's first race, so he wasn't worried. So while the rest of the horse-mounted jockeys thunder towards the first turn, Honeywell's racing pig and jockey head off in the wrong direction. Engineering immediately sounds a warning. In the sky-booth, management grabs a pair of binoculars (received instead of a diploma for completing their mail-order correspondence school MBA class.) As trained, they look through whichever end delivers the most favorable image, and zero in on the pig and jockey. It's all good. It certainly looks like a race. The jockey is bouncing up and down in the saddle, the whip is flying, the pig is waddling as fast as he can, and no one else is nearby. Of course, outside the field of view the rest of the racers are going the other direction but management barely notices. See, the engineers are wrong after all! Eventually, race reality sets in. The waddling pig is nowhere close to the finish line and the jockey is lost. In a last ditch effort to save the race, a team of experts is flown overseas to the track in a desperate attempt to salvage a win. But by now it's too late. There's no time for leg transplants and the jockey won't take advice. The best the experts can do is to put the pig on roller skates, shove him and the jockey towards the finish line, and hope for the best. To the surprise of no one besides management, the pig loses. But management appeals the outcome on the basis that the race rules should have required the pig to only go half as far, that last place really is first because he went the other direction, and that direction shouldn't matter anyway. Movement and fancy footwork are what count. After all, that's what always worked for them in the past. The bettors are disillusioned, and the engineering team can only ponder what might have been. Meanwhile, the rest of the horses and riders go on to win other races, and collect prize money and trophies for their teams. The additional costs of plane tickets and custom-designed piggy roller skates, plus the costs for resources to coordinate the salvage effort, will never be totaled. These, added to the initial purchase price of the pig compared to the cost of a horse, will never be discussed. The impact of re-tasking resources away from other projects will not be mentioned. The overall impact to the plan to campaign a successful race team will be quietly hidden. The only evidence of failure will be when members of the original engineering team that recommended the horse, and the recovery experts who tried to fix the pig, are quietly terminated as a result of missed financial objectives. If this seems surreal, welcome to engineering reality at S&C. A couple observations and unanswered questions:
Tuesday, January 13, 2009 Actually that is getting to be the "norm". They did the same thing in other places; people with 25+ years were let go. The interesting thing is that the severence packages are "secret" in that the recipients are told not to reveal what they are. I guess that is so they can change them in the future without too much backlash. Monday, January 12, 2009 They decided to lay off people in the Vancouver site. This was not the normal; they riffed managers with 15 to 25 years of Honeywell experience down the drain. Replaced by cheap yes men. Friday, January 9, 2009 Don't you realize that H"one"ywell is the Power of "one"? You've got Cote in the middle as the only employee and everyone else is outsourced. This is the Power of One! The coincidence in the name is no accident. Honeywell is really FAT at the top. With the Obama administration coming in, Honeywell should be identified as one of the companies whose tax credits are eliminated because of persistant outsourcing and causing the loss of American jobs. Honeywell has had a policy of negative North American job growth (in lieu of Asia growth) since around 2000-2001. The 1980's style os Jack Welch & Cote management style are dead with the new world that is about to unfold. Friday, January 9, 2009 Well, after the first question the career prospects for anybody here in the states has been downgraded from "possible" to "highly unlikely". Apparently as long as we are more productive than the lower paid overseas workers we are fine otherwise they will "re-assess" the situation. If you have an MBA and can spew jargon such as "leverage our synergies" you are fine. Of course, you also have to say that six sigma is perfect, Dave Cote is the messiah and "customer focus" is what we need. Still, who cares how many people they let go, how low the merit raises go and how the employees have no career prospects as long as the stock price keeps going up and we keep making money for the shareholders and executives. Honeywell is going to end up with the executives in the US, a few sweatshops in 3rd world countries and a bunch of outsourcing contracts. Thursday, January 8, 2009 Clearly, Honeywell is not a career-worthy corporation for employment. Only the few who deal in propaganda rather than reality remain. A business has to deal in reality or it will not survive. Wednesday, January 7, 2009 Well Jack downgraded from Stay to run. When the top of HPS does the duck and cover then you know something is going to hit the fan. Wednesday, January 7, 2009 Jack Bolick is retiring... Monday, January 5, 2009 We have an all hands meeting set up for later this week where the bigwigs of each division will speak about how wonderful we are doing. It is supposed to last for nearly an hour and a half. Once they announce how well we did last year and how wonderfully we are going to do this year they will end up reducing raises and cutting back on staff the way they always do. "Employees are our best asset" is the slogan. So what do they do with their best assets? They cut the pay and lay them off. I want to be the office furniture, at least that still has a place in the company. Monday, January 5, 2009 What a coincidence, I downgraded my job rating from "stay" to "find something else" on the same day. Monday, December 29, 2008 Honeywell was downgraded to hold from buy today. Friday, December 19, 2008 As a Honeywell escapee, I hate the internal structure and politics (etc) as much as anyone; but, if you look at the share price Honeywell, is surviving; while the likes of GM, Chrysler (etc) are having to borrow huge sums of public money just to keep going, Honeywell is still paying share dividends and making a (reduced) profit. Tuesday, December 16, 2008 Responding to the Dec. 9th weblog, that companies such as Honeywell, Invensys, ABB, Emerson, etc., survive despite themselves. I worked for Honeywell for 14 years at 2 different divisions and I can in part agree with the sentiment expressed by the blogger. However, I left Honeywell to go to Emerson 8 years ago and the difference couldn't be greater. Emerson is a very well run, professional company filled with experienced and dedicated employees. Promotions are from within and politics are minimal. They are an engineering company first and foremost with a huge talent base. Don't put Emerson in the same category as those others! Sunday, December 14, 2008 In this economy, it is time for shareholders to call for a break-up of Honeywell. Selling off its divisions would make its components far more efficient and accountable. Honeywell is known to be extremely top heavy - hiring indirect MBA's at the higher levels to do basic mindless metrics when laying-off productive direct production personnel. A break-up would be in the best interest of America! Let the individual businesses survive for themselves. Let's follow what is happening to GM & Crysler executives. Let's hear it from all of you Honeywell shareholders out there - the silent majority! Start talking with your investments and proxy votes! We need to shake up America! Thursday, December 11, 2008 8:29 AM Process Systems President, Jack Bolick, is moving to Houston, along with senior staff. Brian Chapman the marketing director is staying in Phoenix, and I presume his staff. I'm fascinated by the ever shifting sands in the process control competitive landscape. I think that 2010 will find a greatly changed industry lineup. Tuesday, December 9, 2008 Honeywell is as Honeywell does, whether it be in the USA, EMEA, or anywhere else for that matter. I was once told that you either stay with Honeywell for less than 5 years or stay for life. I lasted 3 years and left with a deep sense of frustration. I honestly believe that companies such as Honeywell, Invensys, ABB, Emerson, etc., survive despite themselves. You only have to read these blogs to understand the low level of employee motivation & speak to clients to comprehend the marketplace frustration. If you tried to run a small company with the business model adopted by the "big boys", you would be bankrupt within a year. Tuesday, December 9, 2008 Okay now the management are just idiots. they require that the employees fill in an online goals for each quarter, coming up with some bs every 3 months was no small feat (but alas there are some complete butt-kissers who can do this at the drop of a hat). They now expect all of us to come up with goals from 2009. Sad to say, they don't want us to actually put down goals - they want us to list what we will do next year, so we have to come up with colorful ways to describe our job functions. My goals for next years are:
Saturday, December 6, 2008 - Response to the weblog dated Thursday, December 4, 2008: Thanks man, you brought back some happy memories; I was "down-sized" by Honeywell a while back; my ex-colegues and myself would regularly play BS Bingo (google it) during those "Townhall meetings" it was very rare that any game lasted more than half-way, but was it fun while it lasted! My new company doesn't have things like that, we just get on with the work. Thursday, December 4, 2008 Honeywell upper management just love to have these video, live townhall meetings: this is where they have a camera on them and they spend an hour and a couple hundred thousand dollars blowing wind the employees kilts. They should put camera's on the other side and look to see the people who are actually attending this BS sessions. I had the honour of attending one of these things and man, was I lonely, not a soul in sight so I left after about a minute. I think it would be a lot cheaper just for them to fly to that little town in India and talk to the people that they actually think have any value to the company. Now the managers that read this web log will be trying to trace me, so they can give me the Honeywell christmas gift, "the pink slip"... Thursday, November 27, 2008 Honewell has many strategists, lots of ideas, a lot of talk! Leadership is about execution! Not everybody is selling! The top line is in jeopardy, but too many leaders are just talking, talking..... Thursday, November 27, 2008 I think this parable is very true of many large US corporations especially Honeywell - A Japanese company (Toyota) and an American company (Ford) decided to have a canoe race on the Missouri River. Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race. On the big day, the Japanese won by a mile. The Americans, very discouraged and depressed, decided to investigate the reason for the crushing defeat. A management team made up of senior management was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action. Their conclusion was the Japanese had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the American team had 8 people steering and 1 person rowing. Feeling a deeper study was in order, American management hired a consulting company and paid them a large amount of money for a scond opinion. They advised, of course, that too many people were steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing. Not sure of how to utilize that information, but wanting to prevent another loss to the Japanese, the rowing team's management structure was totally reorganized to 4 steering supervisors, 3 area steering superintendents, and 1 assistant superintendent steering manager. They also implemented a new performance system that would give the 1 person rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder. It was called the 'Rowing Team Quality First Program,' with meetings, dinners, and free pens for the rower. There was discussion of getting new paddles, canoes, and other equipment, extra vacation days for practices and bonuses. The next year the Japanese won by two miles. Humiliated, the American management laid off the rower for poor performance, halted development of a new canoe, sold the paddles, and cancelled all capital investments for new equipment. The money saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses and the next year's racing team was out-sourced to India. Wednesday, November 12, 2008 This story is true across the whole Honeywell spectrum. All the big bonuses have been handed out, so it now that time where you should be grateful you have a job; so don't expect any increase. And its so much easier to lay off people once you know you little mansion is secure. I'm sure there are a whole lot of little gems the big-wigs are keeping from the little people, so don't be surprised when another couple hundred people are let go just before the Christmas holiday. Wednesday, November 12, 2008 The Allied Signal idiocy continues here at NWIL Sensing and Control. Yes, more people were escorted to the door last week. Most of them unaware they were in line for the latest cutbacks. Most had a desk full of work. Some were already working 10 hours days to try and keep up with their workload. I will never understand why we continue to cut headcount regardless of the amount of work we have. I am beginning to believe that Honeywell knows that if you are insecure in your job, you will likely take on whatever work is given to you out of fear that you will be the next one to go. What an immoral and unconscionable way to run a company. This is what happens when a group of inexperienced kids with MBA's try to run a company. Sunday, November 9, 2008 This latest comment is dead-on. The current S&C corporate management folks are either inept or have bone-head edicts thrust on them by ACS or higher. I for one hope I can hang on a few years more until retirement. Of course the closer to retirement gets at Honeywell, the more likely one is apt to be terminated. Saturday, November 8, 2008 The Sensing and Control corporate goon squad is at it again. Thursday, Nov. 6, 2008, approx. 100 people were terminated in Northwest Illinois. Nationwide the number supposedly is several hundred, but in typical close-mouthed Honeywell goon squad style, no official numbers are revealed. It's easier to handle the PR when the public is kept in the dark about what goes on inside the increasingly empty walls of Honeywell facilities. The local newspaper ran a front page article about the layoff, but even they couldn't get firm numbers. Naturally, Honeywell blames the economy. It's easier than admit that upper management is either wed to an unworkable business model, their bonuses, or both. The remaining employees are stunned and can't imagine how they'll ever be able to compensate for the lost resources. You hear sobbing in restrooms. Anger and despair are evident everywhere. Morale has never been so low. And still management can't find the honesty to admit the long term goal is to shut down the local facility. They prefer to keep the employees in the dark while they slowly squeeze the life (and the last few dollars) out of a once great facility and screw over people's lives in the process. What a truly pitiful company. Tuesday, October 28, 2008 - To the Dubai UAE question below: The saying that we have at our site is that if you can survive Honeywell, you can easily survive anywhere else. ALmost to the last person, once an individual has worked for Honeywell and left (or more likely, RIFfed) has done better elsewhere - but you have to go through the experience. Monday, October 27, 2008 Hi, I am currently in the sales force of HPS. What I can say is other companies staff may find it 'tough' working in Honeywell but Honeywellians have no problem working in anywhere..... Tuesday, October 21, 2008 I would like insight from anone on this webog about taking a key position as Business Development Director with Honeywell Dubai UAE. I have a mix feeling about the opportunity and I am not sure if the company culture is the right fit for me. Monday, October 6, 2008 Ref - ABB weblog Sunday Oct. 5, 2008 - two blockbuster deals: Rumour mill here in Honeywell is that it could be us - lots of synergies and a significant better bet than Rockwell. The complete text of the Sunday, Sept. 7 weblog has been published, with editorial introduction, "Growth & Profit by Slash & Burn" in the 10 September 08 issue of JimPinto.com eNews. Here's the link: http://jimpinto.com/enews/sep10-2008.html#3 Thursday, September 25, 2008 I currently work for Honeywell in NY. Honeywell bought out our company in 1999. Our organization was one of the Top 50 Employers. Our Three (3) shifts of production moved to Juarez and China. Now we are a skeleton crew working four jobs and getting paid for one. People left our department but mangement indicates they can only replace them in a low-cost-center. Our work-load has quadrupled. Currently I found out Hand-Held production was laid off. I heard a few months back a new factory was being built in Juarez next to out current plant for the transfer. I hear the Engineers are next. You can kiss your job good-bye to Honeywell Taiwan. If you work up there, get the hell out now! Wednesday, September 24, 2008 Everyday I feel more like jumping ship. I miss the old days! Friday, September 12, 2008 - To the blogger Thursday, September 11, 2008 from Hand Held Products, third paragraph.... If you are being told "we cost too much", this is Honeywell code to tell you that there is probably a process or transition team in place to begin the evaluation on shutting your site down. Its been done before at Honeywell. Thursday, September 11, 2008 Wow, I have to say that these are some interesting posts. I am an engineer at Hand Held Products - sorry, I mean Honeywell now. Still getting used to it. Our site's morale is really low, which is in great contrast to the mode of growth and prosperity we were in last year. At the moment we are in the unsettling calm of the eye of the storm, waiting for production layoffs and announcement of the "right" organization restructuring for us, with both rumored or expected to begin in early October. I started searching the Internet to discover some things about Honeywell that aren't necessarily printed in Newsweek or WSJ, and certainly not told in the creepy, 1984-like internal satellite broadcasts. Seems like all I find are bad things (though I did start by Googling "Honeywell sucks", so as my friend & colleague pointed out I shouldn't be too surprised; as ye seek so shall ye find I guess). The specific post about Hand Held Products here is a bit scary, hopefully exaggerated or wrong. However, other stories about Honeywell companies seem to be coming true for us. We have had good people depart over the last several weeks who would, I believe, otherwise still be around. Open positions that need to be filled are done so by people in India or China, due respect to both nations. Travel spending I'm told is met with unprofessional angry confrontation from Honeywell corporate auditors. Our benefits cost us much more now and our various incentive programs are gone or being removed. An active Big Brother presence is being established in the form of internal security cameras and targeted Internet blockage. I could go on. The only message I get from this is that we cost too much and we're expected to eventually harm the company. (Two interesting asides. First, there are security cameras are being installed mostly in closed areas because Honeywell leaders believe people may try to start fires - yes, specifically fires, in our concrete & steel building - before Honeywell can 'fire' them, ironically. Someone's been watching too much Wile E. Coyote. Second, when I tried to visit this particular site from my work PC I could see no posts dated after 8/22. So I've immediately stopped using my work PC for anything remotely personal and I smile & wave to all the cameras that I know about whenever I pass them.) And if one thing gets me it's the surprised disdain with which the Honeywell visitors reacted to their layoff announcements. As if it shouldn't have been a surprise that you're finally being kicked out like the dog you are. As if it's a sin to expect your years of hard work, indeed life's work for many, could earn you anthing more than your last paycheck. The most valuable individual contributors to our company at all levels and the vast majority of other talent came right from Central NY (before HON I think we employed almost 1000 worldwide and peaked at almost 700 locally, a real bright spot for our rural area). With predominantly local talent - no imported scientists, no ex-blue chip CEOs, no big city turnover rates - we were a leader in our industry. Our culture and the people it attracted were at the heart of our success. The loyalty and values that Honeywell replaced with outsourcing and security cameras is largely what made us, but I bet no corporate accountant will ever believe it and no MBA-flaunting yes-man could ever inspire it. I'm trying to reconcile what I see with what the Honeywell Integration Team told us early on about growing our business and not trying to interfere with our great company culture of hard work, integrity, and family friendliness. Well, the culture is gone, ripped out in a very insulting, disrespectful way. And I guess that growing our business doesn't necessarily mean growing our teams or our site. But then to me it's no longer "our" business, it's "theirs". In the meantime I can only work here for as long as I can stand it and prepare myself for the change I reluctantly believe is inevitable and wonder if I'll go out on my terms or theirs. Thursday, September 11, 2008 - To the Honeywell S&C employee: You are absolutely right, S&C was the jewel in the crown in old red Honeywell. I worked at IAC (or whatever its current incarnation is) in Phoenix, and I remember that at one time quite a few years ago, S&C was going to fold under IAC. That never worked because S&C was much more advanced in just about any facet then we were. In many cases that was the same situation with Honeywell and A-S. Honeywell was just so more advanced in just about every facet with one of the key exceptions being accounting for cost reductions. I left 4 1/2 years ago. Good luck to you and all the great folks in Freeport (?) Wednesday, September 10, 2008 To the blogger who said, "It's about the money and about the next quarter; always was and always is." I could not disagree with you more. My comments (Sunday 7 Sept. weblog) applied to old Honeywll and Sensing & Control only. Conversations with Honeywell personnel from other facilities over the years lead me to believe that many of the ways S&C operated were unique to S&C, and the reactions from other divisions frequently varied from amazement to envy. Old Honeywell S&C understood that three things were necessary for the company to be thrive: 1. The customer; 2. The products; and 3. The employees. Each of these three legs required care and feeding, "nurturing" if you will. When each leg was strong and healthy, profits would take care of themselves. If you failed to take care of the customer, or if the product quality was poor or delivery was late, or if employees were dissatisfied and turnover was high, then performance suffered. Keep all three happy with good customer care, good products, and employess who felt valued, and the money rolled in. Allied took this proven formula and replaced it with one with a different and decidedly narrow focus: Money. Not the customer, not the products, and certainly not the employees. Just plain old Money-Money-Money and ways to optimize it. In doing so, S&C went from a technology company to being one driven purely by accountants. Customers are recognized only as a source of dollars, with the emphasis on how to most efficiently separate them from their money. Instead of products that exceed customer expectations, and are delivered on time, design and build has been offshored to the demise of schedule and quality. And finally, instead of eliminating obstacles and making it easier for employees to perform their jobs, new obstacles are erected daily. For instance, management dictates that everything from components to engineering to capital equipment must be obtained from Emerging Region (ER) sources. Price targets aren't given; only that suppliers must be from ER 12,000 miles away. Why? But, by the way, travel, at least by non-managers, has been nearly eliminated. So don't even think of visiting overseas suppliers for inspections or equipment sign-offs. It ain't in the cards. In fact, it also seems that while many of us have company cell phones, the added efficiency of being able to reach someone wherever and whenever just plain costs too much, so turn them in also. And by the way, normal phone bills lately have been running way too high, so now we're pressured to reduce phone useage. It sounds like something straight from Dilbert. But it's our reality. The irony is, management loves to talk about how important employees are. Yet if this is true, then why is morale lower than ever? If this is true, then why are employees streaming out the door? If this is true, why are employees that formerly had responsibility for multi-million dollar projects now reduced to having to sign-out pencils from the storage cabinet? If this is true, then why does management not take actions to improve morale and reduce turnover? Managment actions speak louder than words. The truth is, employees have been reduced to nothing more than pieces on a chessboard whose only function is to occupy space upon whatever square they have temporary residence. You aren't told the game, you have no say in the strategy. Other than quit the game, you have no control over your own destiny. The chessmaster controls everything. Ironically, the chessmaster seems to spend a lot of time moving pieces left and right and precious little time moving them forward. If you hired in, looking forward to a career with a strong technology company, this is disturbing. As a result, employees who once proudly claimed Honeywell as "our" company now think of it as "their" company (meaning the chessmasters.) If your association with Honeywell has only been since the Allied takeover, then it's easy to understand your comment. But to lump old Honeywell in with this current band of vandals ("always was and always is") does a disservice to those who made the old Honeywell a good place to work. Tuesday, September 9, 2008 - re: Metrologic/Handheld Forget the organization stuff because that's not your problem. Metrologic was bought for its profitability and Handheld for its patents that Metrologic needs to stay profitable. It's just that simple. Anything else is gravy and the plan already covers the case of dumping all the rest this year if we need to; it's not plan A but it is in the plan. In the short term there will be other work but only until it becomes a cost liability then it goes. In the long term it will mostly be moved overseas but little by little so the brainpower is not scared off too soon. The other posts are emotion, but the stuff about using overseas people to meet hard goals until the local help is no longer needed and training your replacements, is true. But it's gradual. Its cheaper today to outsource so that's that. It's about the money and about the next quarter; always was and always is. Welcome to Honeywell. Monday, September 8, 2008 Well not long to go now and soon I will be out of this place. Cannot believe how bad this company has become, and every year it keeps getting worse. I joined a company that was customer focused, sales orientated, management driven and forward thinking. Now we have become internally focused - where internal meetings take priority over customer visits and events, process driven – where the hurdles placed in front of sales / engineering people are so numerous and complex that it is now almost impossible to get anything done, management ineptitude – where management no longer understand what we do and how we do it and are paralysed by indecision and lack of empowerment, a matrix management structure that means no one single person is responsible for anything (at affiliate level at least) and decision making is by committee which means that nothing absolutely nothing get done quickly. Forward thinking - nothing much beyond the next month; anything more is just lip service. Engineering and sales appointments take far too long to fill negatively impacting the business, HR positions, consultants and middle management positions seem to be filled immediately and now represent a relatively large percentage of the workforce who contribute nothing, absolutely nothing, the nett result is that year on year the burden of work falls onto an ever reducing number of people to compensate for the ever increasing number of non contributors. Its an utter utter shambles and getting worse. Monday, September 8, 2008 Thanks for the last posts. At Hand Held there's already been some attrition and it's been directed that those people are to be replaced with resources in India. I'd like to think that a bright future can still be had here but the writing on the wall seems to agree with what was said in the last couple of posts. It will pain me to leave, but at least I won't wait around to help Honewyell get rid of me by teaching away my modest value. Here's to life after Honeywell. Monday, September 8, 2008 We all should have taken the blue pill of get me out of here at S&C. Instead we took the red pill of broken promises and uncertain future, and now we are starting to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. Monday, September 8, 2008 - In response to the blog on Saturday, September 6, 2008: I predict you'll have a couple of years (2-3) before you say good bye to your job. Your story has been the same for many other companies (specially inside ACS). Basically it goes like this:
Sunday, September 7, 2008 The complete text of this particular blog has been published, with editorial introduction, "Growth & Profit by Slash & Burn" in the 10 September 08 issue of JimPinto.com eNews. Here's the link: http://jimpinto.com/enews/sep10-2008.html#3 I have no information about Hand-Held/Metrologic, but the situation you describe is typical, and it will only get worse. My advice is get out now if you can. Run, don't walk. The only future investment will be in China, and your facility will be allowed to wither on the vine. If you are an employee from an Emerging Region, you are part of the answer. If you are not, then you are part of the problem. The worst thing that can happen to any US-based company is that it is purchased by Honeywell. Whereas an enlightened owner would acknowledge that their new purchase must have some expertise and is somewhat good at making money and therefore allow them free rein to continue to do so, Honeywell is different. Their model assumes you must be stupid, because after all, you got bought. Therefore, being wiser, Honeywell will enforce its operating model on you. And ultimately you will be "improved" right out of existence. I work at Sensing and Control in NW Illinois. I would love it if Jim Pinto would do an expose on what Allied Signal has done to this division that once was described as a "crown jewel of Honeywell." What used to be a robust, operationally excellent, supple and resilient organization has been eviscerated. When changing circumstances require the ability to flex and respond (which is all the time) the old organization was able to quickly shift and accomodate. The current organization is brittle, breaks down, and does so frequently. Senior leadership continues its blind love affair with India and China despite neither location having successfully brought in a new program. Indeed, the present track record is failure after failure. One would expect enlightened leadership to develop contingency plans to mitigate the risks encountered when adventuring such as this; but alas, this isn't the case. Instead, this leadership takes us to the edge of the cliff with a blindfold on and promptly steps off into space. The Nanjing facility has been officially declared as "expert" despite having no experience whatsoever. The only thing they have developed is a swagger as a result of their unearned "expert" status. Leadership may know something about making money, but they know nothing about running a factory. Decisions are made strictly upon short term gain, not upon what's good for long term factory operations. One wonders what technical information leadership uses to make decisions, because they never ask for any. Only endless fill-in-the-blanks economic information. This is what happens when you have kids with an MBA degree trying to run an organization. The stream of technical talent either being laid off or walking out the door is staggering, and morale is lower than ever. Clearly, a company that wishes to remain viable would address the ongoing loss of personnel. Instead, nothing happens and the only conclusion left is that the plan is to milk profit out of S&C until none is left, and then dump it. Leadership simply does not care about long term viability. What is deeply disturbing about this is not that we can't be profitable. No, the problem is that we aren't profitable enough and we're not given the tools to be more profitable because the preconception is "we're the problem, not the answer." Apparently it requires selling a lot of additional switches and sensors to pay all those bonus checks. Since Allied took over, nothing works as well as it did before. The department eliminations and cuts are portrayed to represent cost savings. This works only because the inefficiencies that result from these losses are offset by spreading new responsibilities out among "surviving" employees. This results in lower overall productivity, but the metrics of course cleverly don't track this. Instead, the amount of productive work per employee drops below the bean-counters magic cutoff point and then it's time to reduce headcount to "adjust" the number back into balance. Of course, it's only a matter of time before plummeting productivity causes the exact same thing to happen again. But someone made their metric and got their bonus. This is a company with no future, at least for non-leadership US employees. The smart ones bailed out as soon as the Allied buyout went through. Hats off to them. The rest of us naively anticipated better times. Boy, were we fooled. Unless you're among leadership, it's a different story. Live it up, and host your all-employee meetings like Cote did, from Monte Carlo. It's a great life, ain't it? Saturday, September 6, 2008 When Honeywell bought my company - Hand Held Products - late last year, it started with rosy optimism about being able to use all sorts of resources (ie: money) to fuel a new level of growth. That "Honeymoon" was short. I feel like I went into the dentist's office for a routine checkup and came to in the chair with my pants around my ankles. Honeywell has since bought Metrologic, a Hand-Held competitor. The two companies are to be combined into one Honeywell Imaging and Mobility, inside of ACS. We're all waiting to see the local new organization structure. It has already been announced that all our local manufacturing will be gone - 290 full-time and say 50-60 temps in production being laid off, and the product lines will be moving to a factory in China. Our managers say that it will be at least another month before any organization or leadership details will be revealed. A month! A few months already since things were settled? Guess they need Powerpoint training first. Meanwhile morale is sinking oh so low, and important issues are going unattended. Can others out there offer similar tales of what Honeywell's m.o. is when there is an acquisition/merger? Is the delay in presenting a simple org-chart deliberate, hoping to fuel some voluntary departures? Is it paranoid to think the delay is because not everyone will have a spot in the new organization? Does anyone have some good insider information about Hand Held/Metrologic? Like is one or both companies going to be mined for the good stuff and the people just let go? I have a bad feeling about this. Friday, August 22, 2008 Particularly in ME, local Honeywell affiliates are totally spoiling the Honeywell reputation, completely and without any ethics, morals & integrity. Honeywell is also not bothered to see strict adherence of Honeywell procedures and standards. Many talented people have already left. Not only left, they have joined competitors. Let Honeywell wake-up on its strategy in ME. Thursday, August 21, 2008 - Ref: the blog dated Thursday, August 14, 2008: It's amazing. But just by the title "VP Integrated Supply Chain" and micromanager and the business group, I recognize this person. This person was also heard on our telecoms advocating that security carry guns in conference rooms. I'm not certain the policy of this blog site in naming names, but it is high time that certain people are exposed. Thursday, August 21, 2008 In perusing Honeywell jobs at lunch today, I stumbled across the following:
We are looking for talented engineers who have decided to return to the work force full time. Assignments may include working in a lab, in a manufacturing environment, in customer-facing teams, or in project/program management. Friday, August 15, 2008 I finally resigned after several years! Now, let's see if their attorneys come after me? Low morale, no product quality, slow delivery, process after process, my integrity was being challenged daily and no light at the end of the tunnel... There is life after "Logan's Run" (Honeywell). Many GOOD people have not reached the end of their rope... (yet)... When will "They at the TOP" realize their depleating customers are the sole reason they get paid millions annually? By "cutting and cutting" everywhere; they may get "the bonus", but eventually will lose their million dollar jobs. I guess that's o.k.! With millions in the bank, it's time to retire and let another high priced financial guru do the same to a new crowd of unfortunate customers and naive employees. Wonder how Honeywell will fare against the Department of Justice lawsuit? Seems HON sold 11,000 bulletproof vests for 20 Million to the DOJ... Suit alleges that the Zylon shield deteriorates quickly under hot and humid conditions and that a HON employee knew of this issue back in 2003. Thursday, August 14, 2008 One of the big issues in the AAS division of Honeywell is the VP Integrated Supply Chain. He hides behind behind people, expecially (an extreme known micro-manager, is determined in closing North Ameican Sites, in favour of Asia. Friday, August 8, 2008 Honeywell is the worst possible thing to happen to UOP LLC in Des Plaines, IL. It used to be a great place to work. Now the morale is in the pits. Now there's talk of having to document moment not spent in front of a computer. Good people are getting out while they can. JLL has helped to destroy the morale. It won't be long before UOP will no longer be a world class company. Friday, August 8, 2008 This is a place where good working people will be illtreated and humiliated. Only those working as non-technical managers are blessed to grow and enjoy. No one cares for either products or for customers. Saturday, July 26, 2008 From Friday 16 May 08 weblog: "They are just making sure you work for the money while doing four jobs at once and getting paid for one....." This is what happened at the Victoria BC plant also. But now its sold to a Chinese company. I do not know how military technology can be sold to china though. This plant did not have the best salaries. The upper management in the US has a bad understanding of the nuts and bolts of what was being done. Tuesday, July 15, 2008 Things are changing. All because Cote and direct reports need to make his bonus! Guess Cote & Friends were never the little guys? I am trying to make ends meet. Maybe just maybe take a boat out for the weekend and not worry about spending the money due to the next round of layoffs. Or even have a cook out with friends. Times are tough! So why does it have to be 1.7 million profit. Whats wrong with 1.6? Cote and Friends.... Hope you read this blog! Just going to throw it all away for a yearly bonus. Remember who makes your money. All the little guys like me! And honestly a company I use to brag about to friends and family. I wouldn't recommend any product we make. What happens when Honeywell is so lean, they ship Cote & Friends jobs to India! One day...... Wednesday, July 9, 2008 OMG... Is this how we treat customers? Now I know why we're losing business. I guess it is also no secret that marketing at Honeywell is in bad shape. We have lost major business because of this. I think everybody needs to buckle up, things are going to get worse in manufacturing and design (maybe even R&D) in North America. Friday, June 27, 2008 Last weblog>>I just wish the people at the top would stop worrying about the next balance sheet and start worrying about what us customers think.<< I work in customer support and I hear this (and far worse), directly and daily from our customer base and quite frankly, I'm getting a little tired of it. Not that I think you all don’t have legitimate concerns, but every year Honeywell gives the customer base an opportunity to make those concerns known during our Honeywell Users Group (HUG) conferences. And every year the customer base that shows up at HUG appears to be a far cry from the one complaining to the field all year. The one that shows up at HUG rolls over, get it’s belly scratched, and falls in line. If the concerns you bring to field service during the year are legitimate, then when you’re in an environment with those who can actually affect those concerns, please bring it up and hold your position until you get a satisfactory response. Only you, Mr. Customer, can change the things you see as problematic; but not if you continue to go mute when it counts. If you won’t hold your ground, don't expect change and please stop complaining. Thursday, June 26, 2008 Here in Europe, TAC used to have strong links with the people who designed and maintained Honeywell Control products. They could get problems answered very quickly. Since the migration of engineering to India/South America/wherever, communication lines have become slow and (in some cases) unreliable. I just wish the people at the top would stop worying about the next ballance sheet and start worying about what us customers think. With the changes of the past year, I'm starting to get very nervous about future product support. Saturday, June 21, 2008 - Regarding the TAC and Auto College emails: There are no current plans to move Auto College to Houston or TAC to India. That is what we've been told. Whether one chooses to believe that or not is up to the individual. I'll admit getting a straight and truthful story from anyone in leadership around here for the past few years has been interesting, to say the least. But, unless there is solid evidence to the contrary, this is what we have been told and so, it is the only story that we know. I suppose to some that will sound a little foolish, but then again, there is no more reason to believe an unsubstantiated rumor (for those loyal readers of this weblog, consider the "Honeywell to be bought by Siemens" rumor that has been around for the past five years or so and refuses to die) than a mistrusted statement; if nothing else, at least the statement can be tracked. To further elaborate on the TAC move, the comment offered about the need for a TAC reveals not only a blatant ignorance of what TAC does and why it exists, but also what is going on with our product families. That there is a need for a TAC in India, given the increasing presence Honeywell products have in supporting and controlling the infrastructure of that country, has been recognized and is being implemented. I suppose in some circles the obvious conclusion to jump to then is that they will then absorb all of the existing TAC centers and be run from one pole, as opposed to the four current. I can't say that won't happen, but I can say there are numerous and significant factors why it shouldn't. Those factors have also been recognized. Thursday, June 19, 2008 To the previous comments regarding TAC moving to India; it shouldn't be too difficult to work-out, support for existing (legacy) products has already been shipped to India (until they reach end of life), new products are bought-in and re-badged rather than developed in-house, what use would there be for TAC? Tuesday, June 17, 2008 Is it true that the automation college is relocating to Houston, TX? I also hear that TAC is moving to India. Comments please. Thursday, May 29, 2008 Here in Europe things are little better. Here in engineering, guys are overloaded and under resourced. Sales staff still awaiting their sales target!! (Yes it's almost mid year and sales staff still do not know their targets). The reality is much of the sales / engineering organizations feels isolated and demoralised, many have left and many many more are considering their positions - some people may say good - but generally that would only be management who in 2 maybe 3 years time move onwards and upwards leaving the utter chaos they have created behind them for someone else to deal with. Management like to call themselves "leaders" but there is a good deal more to being a leader than a title and sadly most of Honeywell's are not. Friday, May 16, 2008 I started working for a good company 25 years ago: "Sperry Corporation". After the merger and change to the UNYSYS company, they sold our group to Honeywell. Honeywell was actually a decent company until Allied Signal bought it. Since then it has been downhill all the way. If you have seen the movie "Logan's Run", there seems to be a parallel with the movie and managements relationship with Honeywell. People will be required to report management at the appointed time. In my case I would lose 29 weeks of severance pay. The rich management worship the Honeywell "GOD": Stock and they smile all the way to the bank. Friday, May 16, 2008 (edited) The Honeywell Vancouver site is being managed by a third-world-sweat-shop money-hungry person that does not care about anyone but himself and his bonus at the end of the month/quarter! It's sad that there are so many talented, hard working people who actually know this business inside-out, and its a shame that Corporate has decided to have this person lead what he does not understand. When it comes to cut costs, even when involving people that have been there longer than he has, he'll outsource pretty much all the work to whoever makes it cheaper - he is the best at that! Come on all of you people, who are still left in there waiting for packages (that will never happen) run and do not look back. He was put in charge to close the doors.Nothing else. Do you really think he will stick around for long? Let's not forget that Honeywell wants people to know that they are the best company to work for and they have the best salaries. They are just making sure you work for the money while doing four jobs at once and getting paid for one. This used to be a company that people enjoyed working for and were valued. That's no longer the case these days. And it will get worse! Friday, May 16, 2008 I work at Honeywell and will be "Riffed" at age 54. Has any more been negotiated for the bridging to age 55 for retiree medical benefits? Any comments would be appricated! Wednesday, May 14, 2008 Honeywell DCS open standards?? Currently at two Honeywell sites in Australia, Honeywell is doing everything in there power to block Emerson Wireless gateways from being connected to their DCS. The standard connectivity is serial Modbus, nothing special and a common interface to most DCS and PLC. However Honeywell is trying everything to convince these two sites that there are interoperable problems. Modbus serial is easy and open, so what’s the problem? Is it because the system lack connectivity, I think not? Or is it because these two sites have tried both wireless solutions and found the Emerson one easier and faster to set-up. Both sites want open standards HART7, but they get told continually that ISP is the way, the way to what? Seems like the old DE (Dead end) protocol solution again, locking out the competition. In the end the end users will vote with their dollars, and this time around it’s only a gateway replacement not rows of input cards that will keep other suppliers away. Saturday, May 10, 2008 I've been working for Honeywell for the past 3 years, and I've seen many bad things inside the HPS world, as I'm about to quit. I couldn't understand how management could be so bad, until I read this weblog. It's hard to face reality, as I could only imagine an employee's dissapointment while working for 10,20 or more years, and watching numbers and "double digit" profits replace people and innovation. It's plain and simple, Honeywell's soul was sold to the devil, represented by Mr. Cote's ambition and selfishness. I presenced the departure of many talented people over these past 3 years, people who represented Honeywell's real asset: Experience. Nowadays morale is low, and the "new Honeywell culture" relies on Wall street's god: Money. China, India, Mexico are the new Honeywell locations, it reminds me of the sweatshops from Nike or Adidas, and unfortunately, that's the direction where we are all going. In the meantime, I have to deal with faulty out-of-date products from Business Flex and Uniformance, not to mention the Experion fiasco, lousy TAC support (teenagers from a hotline), R&D in crisis, as many talented and experienced people leave everyday, so you'll end up with an enginneer from India who barely speaks English and has never been in an industrial facility. TDC represented what Honeywell was a few years ago, unfortunately, nowdays we work for a sweatshop, plain and simple.
Jim Pinto Sunday, March 09, 2008 11:52 AM On February 22nd 2008 Honeywell announced the closure of their Montreal Aerospace site. This started in December 2002 when Adrian Brown (she has since been promoted) made the decision to cease all OEM manufacturing of fuel controls for Pratt & Whitney Canada at the Montreal site (Leaving only Repair and Overhaul). Most of the machine shop work went to China and the Assembly and Test work went to Honeywell Rocky Mount, NC. The work would be transitioned in 6 mths (what a joke). After millions and millions wasted, that transition is not fully complete 5 years later, good luck completing it now. They actually teach a course at Honeywell headquarters based on this failed transition and what not to do. We were told to work hard to help the transition and the Repair and Overhaul work would come. They could not bring the work until the "TRANSITION" was over. Paul Vidano told everyone in a town hall meeting to "make your numbers and the work will come". Well Paul, we did make our numbers, our OTTR, our TAT, much to your surprise I suspect. Shareholders should be demanding to see the numbers on this transition, because they are in for round # 2 with this recent announcement. Honeywell says this closure is for declining work. This is true. When you have no marketing, no leadership with any power at the site level, what the hell do you think will happen. Work will fall from the sky I guess. The Air Canada APU contract should have come to Montreal, instead you ship APU's from Montreal to Phoenix to be repaired. That's really smart, considering they could be repaired literally down the road from Air Canada. That's putting the customer first, another round of applause for a great management decision. On the topic of severance. What did people get at other sites that have closed? They are calling people in with some weird formula based on your age and years of service. It's anywhere from 1,2 or 3 weeks per year of service, but you must work hard until the end and if you find a job during your severance period you have to call and report it to the company so they can stop your severance. These people are sick. Who comes up with these policies? That's for the non-unionized people. The jury is still out on the compensation for the unionized people. Paul Vidano showed up on Feb. 22 to announce this closure, along with his bodyguards. After 5 years of lies finally some truth. It's sad to see a site close because of such poor management. Sure they will say it was the big bad union. There are no strong unions, just weak management. It's funny how Pratt & Whitney, Rolls-Royce, Air Canada, are all expanding and hiring people. Good luck Honeywell with this new transition. You will need it! Tuesday, February 26, 2008 Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) outsourcing is hitting Honeywell in Mississauga, near Toronto, as of June 2008. As has been at other sites this will be another round of layoffs and complete confusion after the transition with failed results. Another good system will be broken. Way to go , Honeywell!!! This is all part of Dave Cote's "transformation", which is code name for layoffs in North America. Saturday, February 23, 2008 Life at Honeywell-North Vancouver is nothing but living hell day in and out - you get reamed by being social and reamed again if you sit in your corner doing your job! Let's face it folks - this place is going down the tubes daily.... Senior management has no clue of what to expect from corporate next - unless of course their bonuses... and costs and more costs at the expense of the hard working individuals that have been producing and holding steady for the longest time. It has been 1 year now that the "new" and "empowered" Plant Manager came into action..... come on now - who is he kidding? We know why he is there and we also know what is plans are - get his name well known in Corporate Honeywell and at the same time push all the employees out of the door (you know the ones he does not like or thinks they are a threat) so he does not have to pay them out - he gets a bigger bonus! I just wish one of these days Corporate gives him the boot too! It will serve him right! For all th e honest, hard working employees that are still working there - get the hell out while you still can! Your jobs will eventually end up in INDIA..... Friday, February 22, 2008 Honeywell management seems confused as to their long term strategy. They are offering signing bonus's and referral fees to employees as they reload the staff with average people. I am an employee in Houston and have been keening watching this strategy for the last year. I expect these new hires will be gone in 18 months when they don't produce but upper management will remain in place. Friday, February 22, 2008 On Friday February 22, 2008, management announced the closure of the Montreal Honeywell Aerospace site as of August 22, 2008, even though the site was a good performer. The standard business lingo was given, but most people believe it was for other reasons. Thursday, February 21, 2008 Life at Honeywell is not fun anymore. People are so unsure of the future and if you cross paths with your manager beware 'cause you're job is on the line. And at the North Vancouver "center of excelence" that is a fact. You cross the key guy and you are gone. He has no respect for anyone. He will fill positions with his old buddies and has no regard for long time employees. I'm glad I don't work there 'cause all the place is now is a burning platform and he will keep it burning. Monday, February 4, 2008 Life at Honeywell in Clearwater, FL is anything but good if you're one of the great majority. We have oppressive, short-sighted management. We have small "merit increases" to look forward to. We have a massive case of "big brother" corporate trying to micro-manage and monitor everything we do. Information Technology has our business computers so overloaded with junkware and spyware that the machines are all but crippled when we attempt to use them for productive purposes. Even the fastest newest machines are hobbled by this madness! Tier 5 managers are cursed with an inability to effect changes, due to the oppressive nature of their own leadership chain. It is encouraged that anyone who wishes to get ahead at Honeywell blindly say "yes yes yes", never question a decision, and do the company's bidding no matter what the moral cost. In the end, we are left with ineffective leaders who are soft and malleable. Too much reliance is placed upon perception, hearsay, and blind faith in senior management. A free thinker is treated like a cancer. Innovation is stifled. Hard work is rarely rewarding if you refuse to toe the company line or even if you are perceived this way. Tier 5 managers are forced to rate even excellent employees as "below standard" within their group, as the "bottom 10%" is dictated by senior HR/management to receive zero raise. (This leaves the difficult situation where a superior employee in a group of other superior employees may receive a zero raise, yet a completely terrible employee may get the highest possible raise in their group of even more terrible employees.) Morale has been steadily on the decline since Allied-Signal bought us. We are continually told how we should be thankful for our jobs and that we're too costly compared to outsourcing so we should not expect too much in terms of "average" merit increases. Cost of living is also not taken into account. GE moved on long ago from the Jack Welchian philosophy of business. I figure Honeywell will only follow suit when senior members of ex-GE management are GONE from our own leadership ranks. I pray to God these folks GET THE HELL AWAY from Honeywell soon. They haven't the foggiest clue how much damage they've done to our core Aerospace business with their "one size fits all", dumbed-down management techniques. It's only a matter of time before I too follow suit after the several co-workers that have already run away from Honeywell to other places nearby.... At least I can get a decent raise when I go! Thursday, January 31, 2008 As someone who spent 21+ years at Honeywell (I left, last October), I feel qualified to give you some 411 on the "New Honeywell Culture". It sucks. Plain and simple. Back in the old days, Honeywell certainly wasn't perfect, but things really started heading south when Allied bought it and brought a corporate culture spawned at GE under Jack Welch. Over the subsequent years, under Larry Bossidy (ex-GE) and now Dave Cote (ex-GE too, I believe), things have gpne from bad to terrible for the employees. At this point, there are basically five groups at Honeywell:
Friday, January 25, 2008 Re: the big changes on the horizon in Phoenix involving Honeywell Process Solutions.... By the time the facility ends its manufacturing I'll have completed about 40 years of service. It no longer bothers me one way or another....it has been a good ride and I am proud of my participation and contribution to the business.....everybody has to leave sooner or later. The posting of Jack Bolicks announcement in the Honeywell-weblog for the most part explains those changes. Surprisingly enough, the majority of those being impacted in Phoenix are likely/hopfully to be provided positions locally within the various Aero locations. Few transfers are going to occur to the new designated locations for the various product lines. There is also a large aging population within HPS (life'rs...including myself) who will seek positions within the same industry with the competition....or retire! In my opinion, the knowledge loss, initially, will/may create small stumbling blocks along the way and any short-term impact to the customer is something yet to be determined. Funny, but the one claim to faim that Roger Fradin brought with him to Honeywell was that in the ten-year period in which he ran Pittway, he had never laid off a single employee...boy how the times have changed! Regardless of the forthcoming change, Jack Bolick has put Process Solutions back on the map and in the minds of the customers. Five years ago, nobody was even sure if the business would survive. I wonder what must be going thru the minds of Ed Hurd and Don Bogle regarding this latest change and the manufacturing closure of the Union Hills facility!? Afterall, it was the house that Ed built... sad! Tuesday, January 22, 2008 Ok, i just got laid off from HON Canada not too long ago, just before Christmas (had a great holiday...). Honeywell is an elephant when it moves it cannot step on only very specific targets most times, things happen in bunches. They don't care who says what during layoffs it's business and numbers have no feelings. In the end they know that the company has reached a very respectable status as a name and history, they think they can buy most people back whenever they want. The bigger the company the smaller you are, this family environment where people worked till thet get to 65 does exist anymore not even in Japan. Major Shareholers are the dictators we feared in the past accross all corporations. Good luck in this lawless jungle.... Saturday, January 19, 2008 With respect to the posting on Wednesday, November 28, 2007 where UOP was stated as "doomed to be ruined by HW"...I'd like to hear more. In Cote's last broadcast Jan/08, UOP was hailed as a great opportunity. It smelled as sweet as red roses. So what is really going on there?? Please speak up if you know! Friday, January 18, 2008 The atmosphere is really strange at Honeywell these days. We find that when someone finds a job at a competitor's place people actually go out of their way and congratulate the person in a very warm way and are actually very happy and want to know all the details as to how the individual did it. This was not always like this and has become rather twisted. It used to be that when someone left there was sadness and a sense of loss. People wanted to work for the place. But that was when the place was more of a family and less of a Corporation. And that environment has come about more with Cote that with Bosidy. Tuesday, January 15, 2008 Sorry to here about the new round of RIF's at HPS. Worked there for 20 years, left in '04. Allied sucked the energy and creativity out of that organization a long time ago. Best of luck to the 180 leaving soon and the 500 leaving later. I imagine there will be about 150 left to congratulate each other on how astute they are. Keep your chin up!! Wednesday, January 09, 2008 Extract of message from Jack Bolick
Honeywell Process Solutions regularly evaluates all its sites to ensure each operates at optimal capacity and provides the best delivery and quality possible. We also strive to simplify processes and reduce manufacturing complexity to better meet our financial commitments, the needs of our customers, and ultimately, secure a competitive position in our industry. As part of this ongoing process, we have decided to transition the remaining Phoenix manufacturing and assembly factory work to sites around the world. This decision impacts approximately 180 employees in Phoenix. Over the next 18 months, the following product families will be transitioned to existing manufacturing facilities:
In addition, we will continue to transition Series C I/O to contract manufacturers, and we will be transitioning responsibility of the TDC 2000 product line from the Phoenix factory to the service support operations. Separate from this announcement, we have also made the decision to accelerate our globalization plan for the Technology organization at the Phoenix site. The decision to make these changes was made for business reasons and is not a reflection on performance. To remain competitive, we must make these changes to ensure long-term growth for the business. Our focus on global growth drives us to reinforce Honeywell’s image as a premier technology leader. To achieve this goal, we must participate in the worldwide economy, open new avenues for our products and services, locate near our customers, and identify worldwide sourcing opportunities. This will allow us to be more competitive on a global basis. We will provide support for our employees during this time including, as appropriate, applying for other suitable open positions within Honeywell, outplacement services, and severance in accordance with Honeywell policy. I ask for everyone’s support during this time as we work to make these transitions as smooth as possible for employees, customers, suppliers, and the business.
Sincerely, Wednesday, January 9, 2008 I'm a machinist at Honeywell's engine division located in Phoenix, Arizona. All of the work is being systematically outsourced to Mexico and Czech Republic. They are taking the machines tooling gaging and they have the nerve to tell us we have a future here. What really makes me sick is we have hourly people that are traveling there to help expedite and train these folks in Mexico and come back with no work. They recently sent a whole department over the holiday. Now they are telling those people with 15-20 years or more experience that they have to repost for any openings. I'm talking people that have given their whole lives to this company and have worked very hard developing and optimizing these processes. I have news they are not paying these people well in Mexico in fact a lot of the workers leave to work for Walmart. You get what you pay for these days. Tuesday, December 4, 2007 Will have to agree. Even though it is recognized as Honeywell, the truth is it still is ALLIED SIGNAL. And as for employee sastifaction surveys - we have not seen any since Allied took over! Tuesday, December 4, 2007 - Reply to weblog dated Tuesday, December 4: Unfortunately this is true of most companies today (not just Honeywell); Engineering, Design, Development (etc.) now take a (very) poor second place behind the balance sheet and budgetary forecast; the most technically brilliant ideas mean nothing if you can't provide the figures. As an (ageing) engineer I find this sad. It destroys the long-term future of a company (and a country); innovation and ingenuity are being seen as too much of a risk, the only thing that is important is the next balance sheet; I just hope I see the balance restored before it's too late. Tuesday, December 4, 2007 Guys, I read all of the blog entries below. You just don't get it! Honeywell (and especially the old AlliedSignal) is an Accounting company - not a Technology company. It's been like this for a long time. So, expect to be milked (business speaking). It is well advertised in the company communication that there will be zero, or less, job growth in North America. Honeywell's growth is from funding projects & businesses in Asia. When is the last time Honeywell held a formal employee satisfaction survey across the company? Sunday, December 2, 2007 Just my thought on the matter of Honeywell. The way management in North Vancouver are treating the employees is a disgrace. There is no focus or direction from the Manufacturing Manager at this plant. They are laying off employees while keeping contract people on the payroll. What are the plans? Are there ANY plans? I truly doubt he knows what he is doing. But be honest; it is not his fault - it is Honeywell total lack of focus on the pulp and paper market that has ruined North Vancouver and created the problems they are in now. And that Mr. Cote will still get his bonus next year; it is truly a shame he gets a bonus while people lose their jobs. Thursday, November 29, 2007 - what in the world? Ok so, after reading a few of the comments, I feel better, its not me, its Honeywell; moreover, its not just my division, its all of Honeywell. Ever since I started working for Honeywell a few years back, it has been nothing but complete secrecy and total confusion. We never know where we are going or what the plans are. It is truly is complete management chaos, unless they are just playing us, knowing that everything is going to be transfered to AP anyway. By the way, the way they treat their employees is really bad, and if they keep firing soon-to-retire employees, they are going to get in trouble one of this days. Wednesday, November 28, 2007 There is a lot of pressure to use Honeywell products in house. Not too long ago, a 'Six Sigma' type project was chartered to determine the next generation automation system for the research pilot plants and lab plants at UOP LLC. (This was when UOP was still half owned by HW and half by DOW.) UOP has some of the best research capabilities in the world and needs the best technologies to stay at the top. The final report recommended Siemens followed by GE/Fanuc and others. HW placed last. It wasn't completely unexpected when management selected HW over the others, but it was very disappointing. As much as I wish that HW had offered the best product, it was overpriced and performed poorly. Management's decision was totally contrary to the recommendations and several research projects opted to go on their own with Modicon, ABB, even Labview, etc. Then, we all got a big scare when HW bought out DOW's stake in UOP and we were swallowed up by HW. There was a lot of pressure to use HW automation exclusively in our refinery installations. Fortunately, there was enough push back from our people and from our customers to make HW back down some (under threat of losing a lot of refinery business). I really wish that I worked for the company with the best automation product on the market, but right now, it just isn't the case. I do work for UOP and UOP IS THE BEST PETROCHEMICAL TECHNOLOGY COMPANY IN THE WORLD. The US government knows it. Governments all over the world know it. People in the industry all over the world know it. We do things that no one else can do. And that is a fact! Why are we doomed to be ruined, as part of HW, by short-sightedness and incompetency?! Dave Cote seems to confuse real growth and return on investment with accounting tricks, employee indoctrination campaigns (many of my co-workers from communist countries have told me that this is the same kind of propaganda they saw back home), and hocus pocus. How about if we actually beco me the best in all of our business groups? How about if actually we retain and recruit the best talent by treating the the employees right? How about if we get and retain customers by having the best product on the market? How about if we have real, sustainable growth and become a genuine, good long term investment, with substance, for the shareholders, not a Wall Street joke. Dave Cote, organizational games, ripping off your employeees, and milking the cash cow to death is not real growth! I have been here longer than you. I know my business. WE are pretty smart. WE are pretty good. WE have got the talent. WE have got the resources. WE are in the right place at the right time in our market. Don't screw it up! Don't let your short sightedness run the company into the ground! In all our business groups, let's do it right, let's be the best. Sunday, November 18, 2007 - Re: Up 13% this year in organic growth: A large part of the organic growth is forced internal sales to other Honeywell divisions, even though the competition has a better product and service.
Sunday, November 18, 2007 Picking up on the (October 28th) comment below that it is going to get much worse with JLL:
Monday, November 12, 2007
As a former employee of Honeywell, I must say that the way they treat their employees is truly awful. The Division that I left (in pulp and paper) is in a slump; as a mater of fact the whole pulp and paper Division of Honeywell is in a slump. But I guess that doesn't mater to Mr. Cote who will still get his bonus next year. But at whose expense?
I must say that I liked the early years of my career at Honeywell. But now they have nothing to offer to the employees, but BS. Sooner or later their actions are going to smack them back in their faces. As for me, I'm going to start a new career with a better future than what Honeywell (ALLIED SGNAL) has to offer to any of their employees. As for those that remain - beware empty promises.
Monday, November 12, 2007
The JLL fiasco hit at the Des Plaines, Illinois site of the recently acquired UOP LLC. Same disrespectful treatment, as previously noted, of long time, hard working UOP employees. Also, they apparently had no idea that the receiving department was more than just a mail room and regularly handles a significant amount of hazardous materials. Overall the integration of UOP into Honeywell has provoked an exodus of experienced engineers, etc. from the company. Additionally, some clever Honeywell person figured out a bookkeeping adjustment that would allow them to short UOP employees 2 weeks pay in 2007. This has been a record year for UOP and brought several hundred millions of cash into HW. Their reward to UOP was to squeeze the employees for a few million in payroll. There should be a law, but . . .
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Well after 6 months of the JLL co-sourcing at the MTO site. You could say that at this location, if it where not for the ability to fudge the numbers it could be considered a utter failure. It took 5 months just to get uniforms, despite what the eastern manager said, |