Getting an EDGE at Honeywell’s user conference

Its frequent flier week. I spent Monday and Tuesday in Utah at the Material Handling and Logistics Conference, and the last two days in Phoenix at the EDGE Customer Conference, the first user conference for Honeywell’s new Sensing and Productivity Solutions.

For a first time event, it has been well attended, with about 250 end users who’ve come to the desert to learn about the latest developments in automatic identification and data collection technologies. The conference was kicked off yesterday with a presentation by John Waldron, president of Honeywell Sensing and Productivity Solutions, on Honeywell’s vision for sensing and productivity in a Big Data and Internet Of Things world. The new group brings together Honeywell’s sensing division, which has been around for decades, with its mobility solutions, which includes bar code scanning, RFID, voice and printers, to name a few. That vision include four components:

Sensing, which really comes down to the process of collecting data at the point of use,
Connectivity, which allows us to break down barriers and share that information across work zones,
Process, which is the ability to use that information to improve work flows, and,
Information, which is the ability to turn data into actionable information.

“What we’re really doing is bringing together two businesses – our scanning and mobility business and our sensing and controls business – into one new business,” says Brian Hovey, vice president of marketing for Honeywell Sensing and Productivity Solutions. “As we do, we’re able to combine deep technical expertise with real domain expertise in a number of verticals. We think that’s going to allow us to deliver full, end-to-end solutions and not just devices.”

At the heart of this approach is an evolution from an emphasis on hardware to an emphasis on software that enables solutions. It’s an approach being taken by other hardware companies, including GE, which now calls itself a Digital Company, and the best manufacturers of automated materials handling equipment. “The device is integral to a solution,” Hovey says. “But to deliver a full solution, you have to connect the data and that’s software.” Honeywell’s vision, he adds, is a software ecosystem, or platform, that would allow Honeywell partners to develop applications that can plug into the platform, the way that developers create apps for the Apple or Android platforms.

This new approach was best illustrated to me by a video that demonstrated voice-directed tasks in a grocery store. In the first application, an associate working in a grocery store back room was directed by the voice system to build aisle ready roll carts. In the second application, an associate on the store floor was directed by voice to batch pick orders placed online for store pickup. In addition to picking, the associate was directed to cycle count, take inventory and replenish a shelf. I was fascinated that tasks that would usually be associated with a WMS were part of the voice solution, and that processes we associate with a warehouse were being adapted to the retail store.

Based on the breadth of the presentations I attended, which ranged from solutions designed to improve last mile parcel deliveries to solutions to automate commercial aviation and fleet maintenance processes, it’s a reminder of something important: While many of us take bar code scanning and voice for granted, there’s still a huge number of factories, warehouses and other industrial settings managed by paper. There’s a lot of room out there for improvement.