Honeywell reported Dec. 22 that it's agreed to acquire privately held Sparta Systems for $1.3 billion in cash from New Mountain Capital. Sparta Systems provides enterprise quality management software (QMS), including an SaaS platform for the life sciences. It has approximately 250 employees worldwide and serves more than 400 customers, including 42 of the world's top 50 pharmaceutical firms and 33 of the Top 50 medical device companies.
The acquisition is expected to close by the end of 1Q21, pending regulatory approvals and other closing conditions. There is no change to Honeywell's 2020 financial outlook as a result of the acquisition.
Honeywell adds the acquisition will strengthen its leadership in industrial automation, digital transformation solutions and enterprise performance management software. "Sparta's TrackWise Digital and QualityWise.ai are a welcome addition to Honeywell's enterprise performance management software, Honeywell Forge, and will further enhance the link between quality and production data for life sciences manufacturers," says Que Dallara, president and CEO of Honeywell Connected Enterprise. "Our combined offerings will make it easier for customers to gain critical insights from manufacturing and quality data that can improve their manufacturing processes while ensuring product quality, patient safety, and supply chain continuity."
Honeywell will leverage its global presence, Honeywell Forge software and Sparta's expertise to introduce new, integrated solutions, including QMS offerings for life sciences and adjacent industries. Users are expected benefit from advanced digital QMS solutions to proactively achieve better quality, improved therapies, faster time to market, better business and patient outcomes, and more effective regulatory compliance. Honeywell will also continue to enhance TrackWise Digital QMS by adding artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities that augment human decision making. It will also add new IoT-enabled connectivity between quality and operational data to detect manufacturing anomalies and triage quality events in near real time. These continuing innovations will help customers proactively address quality to improve patient safety and effective regulatory compliance.
"Organizations need QMS software with advanced digital capabilities that effectively automates, optimizes and standardizes quality processes," says Dana Jones, CEO of Sparta Systems. "When you combine Sparta's leading QMS platform with Honeywell's existing process automation and software offerings, you create a highly differentiated, comprehensive solution that allows customers to focus more on the value-add activities that will accelerate their growth."
