Honeywell POMS builds out pharmaceutical industry solution to healthcare and CPG sectors

In the aftermath of its failed merger talks with GE, Honeywell, the industrial software, hardware and services giant serving the oil, gas, chemicals and pharmaceutical sectors, is massively expanding its footprint, and also moving into CPG, healthcare, food and beverage – all regulated industries. It’s the result of business restructuring, product development and broadening, and the coming to fruition of a series of acquisitions, most pivotal of which was the POMS business in 1999, and its subsequent development. Honeywell says it’s now implementing projects involving everything from advanced production and materials management to asset management, plant instrumentation and controls and environmental controls – with co-sourcing and joint venture financing deals to match. It’s all focused on Honeywell’s $8 billion Automation and Controls Solutions business, which now includes Building Controls, Industry Solutions (all the process management and advanced control systems and the project business), Fire & Security and Products (instrumentation and controls). “We’re the only company in all these markets,” says Honeywell Hi-Spec director Simon Rogers. And he says the spread of upgraded solutions means that Honeywell can now deliver return on business investment both at the macro level across whole value, product development and supply chains (from “dock to stock” – and beyond), and at the micro level, with modular point solutions where they’re required. It’s happening on several fronts. In Honeywell’s highest growth sector, pharmaceuticals, the firm has developed its POMS-based software to MES v4.3 to cover its heartland commercial manufacturing, but also now with a separate system, CMS 4.3 extended to cover clinical manufacturing supplies upstream, with full granular product tracking and the rest. The firm says it’s also now able to support pharmaceutical and other manufacturers’ drive to be able to develop anywhere and make anywhere with global specifications and common methodologies, alongside plant-specific IT and specifications, by providing contiguous and appropriate data management at every level. Says Martin Atkinson, Honeywell POMS business manager: “The key now is to simplify and synchronise supply chains – to be able to manage the whole value chain with more agility.” Rogers alludes to partnerships with both i2 and Manugistics in the oil and pharmaceutical sectors respectively. Atkinson: “ERP, supply chain management and supply chain execution systems treat plant as black box. We have our domain expertise and Honeywell’s massive resources to make this work.” And Benjamin Bryant, Honeywell’s global communications manager for the sector, emphasises that Honeywell harnesses all this just as effectively on the smaller ticket plant improvement projects. “If they don’t want a ‘dock to stock’ approach, they can take advantage of our domain expertise and get through their bottleneck, whatever the problem is. And we deliver fast ROI, typically within six months, and they can come back for more.”