This episode we are diving deep into our Honeywell Federal Solutions Gold Business Enterprise you may not have heard of. Our very own Vice President DJ of Honeywell Federal Solutions is joined by Eric, our FMNT President as they discuss one of the forty plus Gold Business Enterprises here at Honeywell.
This episode we are diving deep into our Honeywell Federal Solutions Gold Business Enterprise you may not have heard of. Our very own Vice President DJ of Honeywell Federal Solutions is joined by Eric, our FMNT President as they discuss one of the forty plus Gold Business Enterprises here at Honeywell.
Adam Kress:
Hello, and thank you for joining me for the Aerospace Unplugged podcast brought to you by Honeywell Aerospace. I'm your host, Adam Kress, and this is your behind the scenes look into all things aerospace.
Adam Kress:
On this episode we have a treat for you as we take a deep dive into the Honeywell Federal Solutions business. We'll listen in as DJ and Eric tell you about a part of Honeywell Aerospace that you may not have heard of before but it actually plays a big role in our national security.
Joel Reuter:
Greetings and welcome to our July 14, 2021, virtual manager's meeting. I'm Joel Reuter, Director of Communications at Honeywell FM&T Communications. Today's meeting, we're breaking away from our usual format by having a discussion with David "DJ" Johnson, Vice President of Honeywell Federal Solutions and Honeywell FM&T President, Eric Wollerman.
Joel Reuter:
So now I'll turn it over to Eric for some opening comments. Eric.
Eric Wollerman:
All right, hello everyone and welcome for those onsite, thank you, and those offsite, I appreciate the time joining. So if you guys didn't know, DJ here is my boss back on the corporate side, so thank you for coming. I'm looking forward to exchanging some dialogue with you and then for the team, if you do have questions, looking forward to answer.
Eric Wollerman:
Any opening remarks you'd want to share?
David DJ Johnson:
Well first, let me thank the entire team, and thank you, Eric, for inviting me and having me here onsite. It's been since February of 2020. A lot has happened since February 2020, but I can tell you I couldn't be prouder of this team, of the leadership of you and the managers, the employees on the team. This has really been a tremendous ride that we've been on and there's so much more that we're going to do in the future, but it's just great to have this opportunity to sit and let's talk a little bit about the things that are going on.
Eric Wollerman:
Great. All right. We're ready.
Speaker 5:
So we have the first question.
Joel Reuter:
We'd like to tee up for DJ Could you share with us what is Honeywell Federal Solutions?
David DJ Johnson:
Yeah, sure. I'm happy to. And I've got to tell you, it's a tremendous story about Honeywell Federal Solutions. So first of all, the Federal Solutions gold business enterprise is one of 40 plus gold business enterprises across all of Honeywell. And so we think about Honeywell as a strategic business group. Within the strategic business group there are gold business enterprises that are really the overall functional P&L owners of the businesses. And so I have the pleasure of leading the gold business enterprise which is Honeywell Federal Solutions. Its history comes out of FM&T, which I think is the amazing part.
David DJ Johnson:
It's a journey that we started about four or five years ago where we decided we want to expand the capabilities that Honeywell brings to the NNSA. And so we bid on the job at Sandia and we won. We bid on the job at Nevada and we won. And you're chasing the dog and now the dog's caught the car and what do you do with it. And so we were tremendously successful at growing this business and we decided to put a gold business enterprise around it so that we would have some functional leadership and some interface with the customer at the executive level.
David DJ Johnson:
So when you think about Honeywell Federal Solutions, what we do is, we are responsible for the oversight and management of the contracts that we have with the Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration, which is why I sit in Washington, D.C. instead of sitting in Kansas City or Phoenix or any other location is because that's where the primary customer is.
David DJ Johnson:
Not only from a DOE, NNSA perspective, but even from a DOD perspective. Even the end customer sits in Washington, D.C., so it just makes sense for me to have my office there, that I'm essentially five minutes away from the customer in a taxi ride. And we really have a vision that we want to be the premier management and operating contractor for, not only just the Department of Energy, but any federal organization, whether it be the DOD, and it doesn't even have to be U.S. It could actually be international if they have GoCo or a government operated contractor operated model. That's something that we're always interested in doing. So that's Federal Solutions in a nutshell.
Eric Wollerman:
Could you add a little bit about how Honeywell Olathe fits into Federal Solutions?
David DJ Johnson:
Yeah, that's a great question. So, of course, those of you here in the area, know the Olathe facility over in Kansas has a primary responsibility as it relates to the larger Honeywell Aerospace organization. But Honeywell Federal Solutions has a presence at Olathe which is where our strategy and business operations organization is located. So whenever we are looking at particular strategies for growing HFS or if we're looking at business opportunities in terms of either business development or how we're supporting the current contracts that we have. That is done from our Olathe facility and we have our staff from an HFS perspective located there.
Eric Wollerman:
And then maybe one other thing, how large is your staff? I get you have the contracts, but how many resources do you have to deal with, to go manage this global business enterprise?
David DJ Johnson:
Not nearly enough. That's the honest answer. So we have a very small staff, so myself, Ralph Patelli who is our senior director for business strategy and business operations, David Bunn, who's one of our senior managers, Scott Cunningham, who takes care of all of our administrative and analytical support that is provided. And then we have functional support. Therese LeBlanc who is our general counsel who supports Federal Solutions and then we have others who provide part-time support like Ryan Matthews, who all of you know here, also supports the Federal Solutions business as my CFO. So at the HFS level and the oversight of all the different sites, he provides that support for us to collaborate and bring all of that information together.
David DJ Johnson:
So very small staff and very much unlike our competitors. Our competitors may have 15, 20, 30 people on their staff. We have a staff of less than 6 people. And so that's one of the amazing things about our organization is we have such great collaboration with our sites that a lot of that we do together as an organization.
Eric Wollerman:
Great.
David DJ Johnson:
And let's talk a little bit about the enterprise because I think this is the interesting part is most people, of course, are very familiar with FM&T here in Kansas City, but of course we have the Sandia National Laboratory under the inTEST LLC organization. We have the Nevada National Security site under the MSTS LLC. And then at Savannah River, we have the Savannah River Nuclear Solutions LLC. So four locations of the eight different locations within the NNSA. We are the only contractor that has presence at that many sites around the enterprise.
Eric Wollerman:
Great.
Joel Reuter:
Okay we have a few more. For DJ. DJ, could you explain what your top priorities are at Honeywell Federal Solutions?
David DJ Johnson:
Yeah, that's a great question and it's one that Eric and I talk a lot about in terms of the priorities for Federal Solutions, because we want to make sure we have alignment with what we're doing at FM&T. I have this conversation with Dr. Perry at Sandia and with Mark Martinez at Nevada, and with J.C. Epting who is at Savannah River and we talk about the priorities as it relates to how do we continue to differentiate ourselves at Honeywell within the Federal Solutions space? And a lot of that is about the best practices that we bring from a commercial best practices perspective.
David DJ Johnson:
Many may know that Honeywell's going through a transformation. We talk a lot about being a software industrial company. And that's a bit of a change from those who have been around Honeywell for probably more than 10 or 15 years, but that's a big change for how Honeywell is viewed in the industry. And so we want to take what are the best practices from that transformation and bring that to our Federal customers.
David DJ Johnson:
One of our priorities is best practices. How do we take things like digital transformation and bring those into our federal government contracts? And then the second thing we look at is talent. One of the things that Honeywell is very well known for is the engineering technology talent that we bring to many industries. Well, we also want to bring that to this industry as well. And so that's our second priority is to look at the talent and how we develop that. How do we build succession plans? And making sure we demonstrate to our customer that the team that we have on the field today is growing even more teams behind it. So that way, the 71 plus years we've had here in Kansas City, we're going to have another 70 years because we've developed the talent to continue to build that.
David DJ Johnson:
And, oh, by the way, we want to have a 70 year relationship with Sandia. And a 70 year relationship with Nevada. 70 year relationship with Savannah River. So those are really the two key priorities are the business practices and the talent that we're developing.
Joel Reuter:
Great. So DJ, how do you accomplish these priorities?
David DJ Johnson:
It's not easy. I think that the key for us... So if we take the best practices, it's really about collaborating and networking across Honeywell. And many of you know, Honeywell's 110,000 people. It's a large organization, globally a large organization, but making sure that we can connect the right experts from Honeywell to FM&T is how drive those commercial best practices into this organization.
David DJ Johnson:
And, oh, by the way, it helps other people outside of FM&T understand the business and they get bought into it and they have skin in the game to see us be successful. So that's the first thing in terms of bringing commercial best practices, it's about building a network around Honeywell, around this site.
David DJ Johnson:
The second thing is in terms of talent management, talent development, so Honeywell had tremendous capabilities in terms of tools, training, education, to help us build these kinds of development programs to help develop our people. So we can leverage the best of Honeywell's capabilities in doing those things in order to develop the talent.
Eric Wollerman:
I would say for the first, the Federal Solutions team does a nice job communicating what FM&T is. A lot of people at Honeywell still don't know that Sandia Labs is part of Federal Solutions. And maybe some people in Sandia don't know they're part of it, either. But ultimately, I think there's an awareness, especially for me coming from aero. FM&T was the business that no one ever talked about and then it was like you can't interact with them. That's not really the case. There's a lot of value there and it's figuring out how do you navigate that? And I think you do a great job doing that, especially being in D.C., our government relations team's there. A lot of connectivity that happens there and then I think all the Federal Solutions team connecting back into aero and your leadership, and I think it helps that our current president, Mike Madsen, and now the ISC supply chain VP, Steven [Slipovich 00:12:04], also had some previous experience here.
David DJ Johnson:
Absolutely.
Eric Wollerman:
Karen Mattimore, our HR leader at corporate also oversaw this. So there's a lot of good talent in Honeywell at the very senior leadership level that's aware of this business-
David DJ Johnson:
Absolutely.
Eric Wollerman:
And I think it only helps enable what you're doing with Federal Solutions.
David DJ Johnson:
Yeah you make a really good point and even if you go even further up the food chain, so someone like Vic Miller, who is very intimate with the things that we did here at FM&T and then as we grew the business, Vic actually accelerated up into the organization and now he's at the corporate level. And again, another person who knows about FM&T, knows anybody the portfolio for HFS and the things that we do. And that's how we get the word out about the things that we're doing. I've personally have briefed Darius as our CEO about not only the FM&T but our entire portfolio. And I will tell you, he's always very impressed with the work that we do here. Not just from a business perspective, but just from the reputation that it gives to us as being a leading edge technology organization, even though we're doing this on behalf of the government, it's also because we bring these commercial best practices that make that even better for our customers.
Joel Reuter:
Yeah, great. So DJ, earlier you talked about using the graphic of our different sites. After 2015, 2016, 17, Honeywell landed some impressive wins with not only the KCNSC here but also Sandia National Labs, Nevada National Security site, and Savannah River contracts. What contributed to the success and these wins?
David DJ Johnson:
Wow, there's a lot there. I don't want to say it was luck because you had to have a plan. It started off first with a strategy deployment that said, "Hey, how can we take what is best about FM&T, understand what those capabilities are, and can they be easily scaled and translated to other facilities? To a lab environment? To a test site environment?"
David DJ Johnson:
And so I would go back and look at the things that we talked about and the proposals that we used in order to win and that was we communicated what was best about FM&T from a past performance perspective, what was best about FM&T from a people perspective, and then also from a business operations perspective. And when you take those types of things and you lift and shift those into other organizations, the government sees the value of what Honeywell could bring to different sites. So Sandia was the first example of where we took some things that were good out of FM&T and worked to translate those and try to do fit for purpose for Sandia. And the government agreed that was what they wanted to see. And so we were successful in winning Sandia.
David DJ Johnson:
If we look at Nevada, again very different situation, different organization, but what they thought about was the process [inaudible 00:15:11], the business operations discipline, HOS and how important that was to bring that kind of discipline from an execution perspective to Nevada. And so that was a differentiator that we truly believe was the reason why we won both of those contracts.
David DJ Johnson:
I also think the competitors just didn't see us coming. I think they really thought that Honeywell was just comfortable just running FM&T and that's all they were going to do. And I think we had to demonstrate to people that we really felt like we could contribute to the nation's security by expanding what we do here to other locations.
Joel Reuter:
Okay I have two questions and I'll start off with Eric, but then I'll follow up, the same line of thinking to DJ Eric, as the president of this site, where and how are you seeing Honeywell's value being implemented here and DJ, are you seeing Honeywell's value being implemented throughout the other sites managed by Honeywell? So it's in two parts.
Eric Wollerman:
So I'll take the first one. DJ alluded to it and I can speak to it really from where I've come. I came from the non-FM&T, but still Honeywell world, and you're coming into a different type of environment but yet it feels like it's still the Honeywell that I know. So having a legacy culture of 70 years of connections and touchpoints has allowed this business to mature as Honeywell's matured, and evolved as the business has evolved. The incorporation of HOS is a great example how this site got engaged early on in the process, reached in to Honeywell, understood what it is, made it for its own, ran for the assessments, scored itself, scored well and really became a leader in what we do.
Eric Wollerman:
And if you look at our factories, you look at our layout, look at the way we've executed the move from banister to bots, that transition plan, that activity, we've just ingrained it into our culture. So we see HOS as just part of what we do. It's not an and then or something else.
Eric Wollerman:
By doing that and as we've grown here as a business, we've transferred that culture into all the people that've come in. And I think it's still a very results oriented culture. We're still trying to drive for a better performance. You've seen the Flawless launch. You've seen NPI, new product realization activities, and we're seeing this word, produceability, which really, you could say is a made up word that Honeywell made up and now we talk about it all across the enterprise. We're talking it with our DAs. And so we really are seeing it and we may not recognize that it's there all the time, but us staying connected to those larger strategic initiatives and directions has really allowed FM&T to bring that here. Figure out how to apply it with the same spirit and intent, apply it into this enterprise. And then we're seeing it evolve in our interactions with our sister and peer sites.
David DJ Johnson:
I'll answer the broader question in terms of the implementation across the rest of the sites. Being the head of HFS, I also have the privilege of sitting on the board at Sandia as part of their Board of Managers. I also sit on the board at Savannah River in their Board of Managers. I actually am the Board Chair for the Nevada site. So I get the privilege of seeing the different sites and how they're governed and how they're executing.
David DJ Johnson:
So one of the things I see from an implementation perspective is you think about HOS and some of the elements of that. Things like tiered accountability. Well who does tiered accountability now? A lot of the sites are doing it and we're seeing it collaborating across the sites. So Tier 5.5 that Kansas City does with Sandia is something we had not done before and so that's an artifact of Honeywell and its capability.
David DJ Johnson:
Just between Savannah River and Kansas City, you have a Tier 2.5 where from a Tridium perspective you have this relationship with Kansas City and the ability to escalate issues and do problem solving. Even at the headquarters level where you have a Tier 6 and a Tier 7, I would guess no one thought three years ago we would be doing Tier 6 and Tier 7 at NNSA headquarters. Those are the implementation of the best practices from a Honeywell perspective. And, in fact, we're even hearing now, people wanting to do a Tier 6 and Tier 7 as it relates to the Nevada site because they have issues that are broader across the board to the various sites as they do the [inaudible 00:20:28] program which is the new underground testing capability and it involves [inaudible 00:20:32]. It involves Sandia, Livermore. And so now do they need a Tier 6 and a Tier 7 at the headquarters level?
David DJ Johnson:
These are the kind of implementation things that I get to see that are real from a Honeywell perspective that are being implemented across the enterprise.
David DJ Johnson:
But I can tell you the feedback I get from them, both from the headquarters and even from the conversations I have with the Field Office managers at the various locations. They have very high hopes and very high expectations for Honeywell because they see the presence that Honeywell has across the site and they constantly remind me about, "Hey, there's a reason why Honeywell was selected at these particular sites." Number one, because you have demonstrated past performance that says you know how to run complicated organizations. You know how to drive culture into those organizations, that's a culture of continuous process improvement and they want to see continuous process improvement. And that means continuous improvement in terms of communication, continuous improvement in terms of collaboration and technology exchange and just getting the job done.
David DJ Johnson:
And so I think their feedback would be is hey, you're getting better at this, and I'll admit we got off to a little bit of a rocky start running Sandia and Nevada. We had a great transition. We were able to get our team on board and getting people operated. We're getting tier boards in place and we were deploying HOS in its fashion at Sandia and at Nevada, but in terms of getting the sites to collaborate better with one another, to really improve that communication, it took us a little bit longer than what we expected.
David DJ Johnson:
But I think the customer would tell us now is we like to see that collaboration. One of the comments I heard two years ago was, "Gee, when a problem happens, it was never Sandia and Kansas City working together, it was who's pointing a finger at the other." If you ask them that today, they'll say, "Wow, it's always collaborating on how to solve a problem."
David DJ Johnson:
When I talk to Dr. Perry, it's like talking to Eric. When I talk to Eric, it's like talking to Dr. Perry. There's this linkage that we've created between the two sites, and we're expanding that to the other sites. I mean, we're making outreaches to Livermore and to Los Alamos, partnering with them, bringing them and joining arm in arm together to know that we, as an enterprise, are required and need to collaborate with one another. So I feel like Honeywell's helped to enable that because we've tried to break down those barriers for relationships and help build those foundations.
Eric Wollerman:
I agree.
Joel Reuter:
A question came in. What does Honeywell offer that others can't? What sets our management apart? I'll send it to you, Eric, to see if you want to start.
Eric Wollerman:
So you can take it a couple ways. What I said with HOS but broader than that, Honeywell is a huge organization and if you look at all the different things Honeywell does, even outside the aerospace portfolio, there's so many different things that's it like this free resource of information that we just have to figure out how to navigate and we can really bring the value into what we do here in the NNSA or even the DOE. I mean, we have applied that, the SCMC is a great example where we brought in the SCMC is really generated from what Honeywell was delivering value for itself, we took that and brought it in and go hey we can offer this in, the NNSA and DOE sites. We created the SCMC and it's been running. We had a billion dollars savings last year. Well, up til last year.
David DJ Johnson:
Up til last year.
Eric Wollerman:
But I think we offer that and DJ can probably add to the complexity. Being our relationship here in Kansas City has always been with Honeywell and 100% Honeywell. And so we have a very easy connection without a lot of politics to get in the way of... As long as we engage and we can find that counterpart on the other side to engage with, we understand our rules of engagement, the possibilities are endless. And there's so much opportunity that in our environment, especially in a government space, that if we can find ways to bring a commercial best practice in and apply it in our environment, it could yield savings to schedule or cost to taxpayer dollars, but then also drive our national security mission. So I think it's huge. It's a huge asset for the NNSA and for our country to have us involved doing it.
David DJ Johnson:
I think the thing that I would add to that is, and we talk about comparing ourselves to competitors. So think about the competitors that are at other sites that are, and sometimes teammates of ours. Sometimes they're competitors. But in many cases they are engineering product and construction companies. So they're EPCs.
David DJ Johnson:
Honeywell's not an EPC. Honeywell is a commercial products company. And so when you're a commercial products company, you think about problems differently. You think about it from a production perspective. And so here's what I feel is our differentiator against our competition. And again, sometimes our teammates. And that is we look at these kinds of problems from a production mindset.
David DJ Johnson:
Let's just take an example, Nevada. So when we took over the Nevada National Security site, through MSTS, they were doing essentially one subcrit experiment a year. Just one. And it was taking them 12 months to get geared up, get ready for that one subcrit and so pretty good pace. But we brought a production mindset that says, look, we could actually do more if we really leaned out some of the processes, really worked with the customers up front to set requirements, design experiments, execute those, move on to the next one. And so now we're doing four to five subcrit experiments each year.
David DJ Johnson:
But that's because we looked at it from a production mindset perspective and not just from an experimental mindset. Not that there was anything wrong with what they were doing before, but this is how we got more capacity and more capability out of a place like Nevada.
David DJ Johnson:
Same is true at Sandia. We've offered to them demonstrated things to them as to how you can have a bit of a more production mindset around design so that you can produce them faster. Not that we want to influence the design, in fact that's the last thing that we want to do, but through things like Flawless launch and NPI, we've introduced things to them where they can speed up the process.
David DJ Johnson:
Because one of the things that we've talked about with Sandia is their biggest differentiator to the nuclear deterrence mission is not because they're the smartest people on the world, because they are. What's the differentiator is that you can do it faster than your competitors. That's the real differentiator in the nuclear deterrence business, is we have to be able to evolve our systems faster than our competitors are doing it. So helping Sandia understand how to really drive that, I think has been a differentiator for us, but we have a tremendous amount more that we want to be able to help all of the sites be able to do and I think those are the things that set us apart from our competition.
Joel Reuter:
I have a few questions that are coming in and they're more about people and culture before we get to a couple that have also recently popped up on my screen here.
Joel Reuter:
We've talked about the value that Honeywell brings, our processes, what about the people? They're the ones that are keeping our mission alive and going. What are your thoughts on the talent here and what can we do to keep our talent and attract new talent?
Eric Wollerman:
I'll start it. So coming from the Honeywell side, outside of FM&T and coming here, and especially coming in a new role, what do you expect? I'm blown away by the people. Brilliant people and it's amazing... I used to think, especially when we were going through [inaudible 00:29:35], we had great pride in our mission. We'd do our manager effectiveness surveys, it was positive employer relations and we'd get really excited about pride. I mean, that tier in FM&T is here. This pride for the mission and the focus and dedication, I mean, I feel it in what we do. It's amazing and by coming into this environment, then, people can wrap themselves around the mission very well and managers on the call, I mean it's our jobs to go continue to develop our teams, continue to keep them challenged and people, there's an endless amount of learning here and endless amount of ways to apply yourself and multiple career paths you can go and never leave this business, which is pretty amazing.
Eric Wollerman:
And you can't do that, I'd love to say anywhere else in Honeywell, I'll let you decide if that's real, because of the way we're designed and how we operate. It really presents a great environment to thrive in for our employees. And it's on us as managers, we've done a lot of hiring over the last few years, to retain that talent, keep them challenged. Those that rise in the organization continue to develop them. Those that want to become experts in their organization or contribute where they are, we value everybody because it takes all of us to execute this mission. So it's on us as leaders to continue to make that thrive. The mission, I'd love to say, will always be there. But I think it does give us a great foundation to drive from.
David DJ Johnson:
I'll tag onto that and talk a little bit about transparency and engagement as it pertains to our workforce. And this goes to the question as it relates to how do we develop talent, how do we recruit people, how do we keep people? And so I always think of those two things, transparency and engagement are really the two things from an employee engagement perspective that I think not only encourages and has people come and work for us, but it keeps them here.
David DJ Johnson:
You talk about pride in the mission. Well, there's a transparency that goes with that. That we're transparent about the ultimate mission that we serve and the national security posture that we are trying to help the country maintain. There's a pride element that goes with understanding that that's part of what we do. There's a transparency that goes with managers who sit down and are helping to develop their team but they develop them by being honest with them, by having critical conversations with them about performance, about goal setting, about what's important for the customer, about continuous improvement and listening to the feedback from our employees about how do we make things better? And taking those kinds of things seriously. That is all a part of what we do within HOS and that's a part of the employee engagement part I think we have to have.
David DJ Johnson:
I also think we have to acknowledge that there's great ideas out there that maybe don't always get heard and that's were a lot of our inclusion and diversity efforts are coming from is because it's one thing to be diverse in terms of all the different diversity areas that are out there, but if it's not inclusive, if we're not listening to all of those great ideas that maybe the shy person that's sitting in the corner has a great idea, but the last time they brought it up, they got shot down. But encouraging that engagement. I think those are the things that attract people about working for a Honeywell and staying with a Honeywell.
David DJ Johnson:
Now, we're not a perfect company. We've got challenges that we're all trying to work through. We're even dealing with working remote versus coming back into the building and trying to get that chemistry right about how do we do that. But at the end of the day, we know that we have a mission that we have to perform. And we have a customer that has high expectations for us to perform that work. And that's always going to be foremost in front of us.
Joel Reuter:
Good. Two more questions before I ask to wrap things up and I'll throw this one out there. Let's have both of you give a future projection of the KCNSC, what would you like to see happen in the next coming years?
Eric Wollerman:
I'm going to let you go first on this one.
David DJ Johnson:
Well, I will tell you my horizon is very long. I'm already looking into 2050, already, and saying what does KCNSC look like because we would still be here. We will have digitally transformed this place where it is automated in a lot of its processes. Not because we have less people, but because we have more people because we're doing even more things for this customer.
David DJ Johnson:
And so I see that in the future for this site, but from and HFS perspective, I see us at Sandia, into our third, fourth contract, 10 years with them. Same with Nevada. We're at other sites. Influencing them with those capabilities and I also see HFS overseas doing that with other federal governments that are aligned with the U.S. in this business area to be able to provide those same kind of capabilities to them.
David DJ Johnson:
So I have a pretty... It's pretty far out there. Now I don't expect to be here in 2050-
Eric Wollerman:
What?!
David DJ Johnson:
... just in case anyone has any expectations, there is a limit to my runway, at some point, but I clearly expect the name Honeywell to still be here in 2050 and still going strong.
Eric Wollerman:
All right, so I'll take is because I'm very bought in to our strategic plans here at this site. And I look at all five initiatives that we have, so if you look at production ready enterprise or rate readiness, and you look at the time it takes to execute a program, 10, 15 years, and I think Dr. [inaudible 00:35:59] would be really happy to hear you say, can we really do that in less time? And we look at... We're an environment where the hardware needed before you get to that first production unit is more hardware than you actually have in production. Something isn't right there, right?
Eric Wollerman:
And to drive that, you need to rethink the way you're building, designing, and getting confidence in your product because I don't think requirements will lessen. It will be different ways of how do you get confidence that you're meeting those requirements.
Eric Wollerman:
We've talked with Sandia about mod sim on how can you really get confidence in modeling something where you don't actually need hardware. Can you iterate on your design without actually producing a part? And so then when you go to produce it, it's a better design. I would expect to see us in that space.
Eric Wollerman:
Wheen we go into our supply chain, I would like to be at least in the DOD, within Honeywell, to be recognized for one of the best supply chains out there, getting a handle on the risk that's out there and confident in what we're executing. And it's one that can be counted on whether we make something here or we have a supplier do that. And it's known and we just blow that out of the water. And we're invested in doing that, but it'll be a huge enabler for us.
Eric Wollerman:
I think all of us would like to say we actually have a space and the right amount of space, and maybe even some white space to go be a little more agile. We feel like we're a little impaired at the moment. Now we might have to be creative in the ways that we create that agility. It may not be just, hey, here's just an extra couple million square feet, just in case you need it. I'm not expecting that. We will have to work on that.
Eric Wollerman:
And I think the digital technology piece, how we use data, the connectivity way beyond what we do here within our FM&T business is crucial. We have it in our 25 year plan. We're working with NNSA. We want to see that connectivity. If we just build a connection between Sandia and Kansas City, we've failed. But we all fail. And we need to figure out how we use that data.
Eric Wollerman:
I'd like to see a cloud environment. When, right? And how do we manage that risk and be comfortable doing that? And then I think our workforce. I don't know if I'll be here in 2050, I haven't thought that far ahead, or how far in debt I'll be with my kids that I just need to work, but I'd love everyone that's here today to go see that they're able to contribute to that journey. We bring in maturity in our diversity and inclusion aspects, as you pointed, and others and we're really... I feel like we're an employer of choice. But I think we could be even much more.
Eric Wollerman:
And really recognized and well connected within our corporate parent that people are standing up outside, how do I get in this place and the talents there and we have the tough job of just picking this great talent. And I think we have a lot of foundational activities there and I think it's on us to get us there. But I think it's a bright future for what we see.
David DJ Johnson:
Yep, I agree.
Joel Reuter:
And before we wrap things up, we'll go along a personal note. As being leaders in a fast-paced environment, how do you unwind?
Eric Wollerman:
I have four year old triplets. I forgot what unwinding is. My unwind right now is taking them fishing and that means that I don't get to fish. And what it means is I can go through a dozen night crawlers, cut them in quarters in about an hour and all I do is take fish off and on and put worms on and off and I bring a beer with me and I never even get to drink it. So I love it. My kids love it. I enjoy it because I can't even think about work because I'm worried about my kids falling in the water. And you can't bring a phone because you might knock it in the water, so it is a complete disconnect any opportunity I can I tell my wife to stay home and I'll go take my kids out fishing.
Eric Wollerman:
So right now, that's the ticket. Who knows, I think maybe tomorrow, I'll get to do it again.
David DJ Johnson:
That's an interesting question. So in past lives people have said that DJ's a vampire because they get emails from me at two and three o'clock in the morning and I always tell them, please, if you respond to me at two or three o'clock in the morning, something's wrong with you. I already know that I'm crazy. I don't want you to be crazy.
David DJ Johnson:
But I think the thing that I unwind, and everybody goes through different cycles in their life about what they use to unwind with. My kids are no longer small. My oldest is 28. My youngest is 26. They're pretty self-sufficient although they're still in my wallet to some degree and I'm still working on that. That's what I would really like some relief from.
David DJ Johnson:
But last year I bought a John Deere riding lawn mower, and cutting my grass is truly my release. I have been known, during the day, I've done back to back meetings all day. It's about two in the afternoon and I've blocked out an hour. I go get out on the John Deere, put the head phones on and I'm just driving, cutting my grass, and I'm processing the things that have transpired for the day and I start thinking of, "Hey we could do this. We could do that. Wow, that would be great. No." But the patterns I'm cutting in the yard probably aren't quite straight because I'm losing focus, but it's just always been something I've always liked doing is just my yard. And so that's my release. I go out and I cut my grass.
David DJ Johnson:
Now in the winter time, there's a problem there because I can't cut snow or anything like that. But what I've figured is, I figure if I can use my John Deere to remove snow from my neighbor's driveway, I could pick up a couple extra dollars. So I'm always thinking about AOP, thinking about money, so okay, maybe I can get my neighbors to pay for my gas or whatever. So that's my release.
David DJ Johnson:
You asked. I had to give you that answer.
Joel Reuter:
Well, these are great images. I'm going to have to see if you have anything in your Facebook feed so we can see this.
David DJ Johnson:
My daughters are not allowed to take pictures of me on the John Deere. I'm trying to keep my image here in my suit. Now people think I actually ride in my lawnmower with this on. I actually take the tie off when I cut my grass.
Joel Reuter:
Okay, good.
David DJ Johnson:
Just wanted to let you know.
Eric Wollerman:
That's great. That's great.
Joel Reuter:
On that note, any parting comments that you would both like to make before we close up this meeting.
Eric Wollerman:
No, again thanks. DJ was here today and we had a couple other Honeywell visitors, so it's great to have you. Especially since being enrolled to see you on site again. We welcome you back. And we welcome any other Honeywell visitors to really learn more and engage with us. So thanks for coming.
David DJ Johnson:
No, thank you and thanks again for the invite and thanks for inviting other members of the Honeywell Aerospace team to be here. This will not be the last time. We want to continue this type of outreach to the rest of Honeywell. I can envision us bring folks from PMT and SPS and HPT to come and see the types of things that we do here because, again, they're going through transformational efforts as well, and there may be some things that are applicable that they are doing that they could help pour into this site as well and so we just look forward to the continued relationship that we have with this organization and I can't tell you how proud I am of what this team has done over the last year.
David DJ Johnson:
We were joking earlier today about the COVID babies that we have, and when I say COVID babies, that means anybody who has come to Honeywell since the start of COVID, we consider you as a COVID baby because you were birthed during COVID. And we have lots of them within our organization, across the enterprise and we just want to celebrate them, welcoming them into this family, into this culture and now we actually get to see them face to face and they get to see us. So I just couldn't be prouder of the work that the FM&T team is doing. So keep up the great work.
Eric Wollerman:
Thanks, thanks. Appreciate it.
Joel Reuter:
Thank you.