Honeywell Listens to the Voice of the Customer

Honeywell knows that their user community is one of the most loyal and inventive in process automation. So, perhaps more even than most DCS companies, Honeywell has institutionalized user input. Kerry Sartain, of Georgia Pacific, provided a report from the User Input Subcommittee (UIS). His Annual Report explained what the UIS does, and how it does it, and what the effects are on Honeywell products and users. The UIS collects user ideas for product enhancements, conducts an annual selection process, and has dedicated developers from Honeywell working on implementation of the selected enhancements. So the developers work for the User Group! The enhancements now number 137 that have been developed at the behest of the UIS. This year, there will be 16 new functions including: --backup/restore --automated TPN backup --HPM numeric type point alarm capability and next year, there will be 10 more functions including expanded ModBus addressing. The UIS is part of Honeywell's committment to listening to the Voice of the Customer. They have even commissioned proof of concept prototypes for hardware and software, which, if they prove out, will be user-driven additions to the Honeywell product line. Honeywell's little mini-commercials between speakers focus on DRIVE COMMITMENT FOCUS COURAGE and it certainly takes courage to turn over development resources to a bunch of end users. (GRIN) Not every manufacturer would be caught dead doing that.