Introduction
Honeywell is a multinational company that has operations in over 96 countries with sales averaging at $7.3 billion and total net sales of about $420 million (Honeywell Process, 2017). The company is a diverse organization that operates in many nations but working towards a common organizational goal. All local and international Honeywell branches aim at creating control systems for heating, industrial processing and air-conditioning products worldwide. The company has employed a record number of over 53,000 employees worldwide making it among one of the largest multinational corporations (Honeywell Process, 2017).
However, one would wonder how such a company achieved multinational success over the period it has been in operation. The fact that the organization operates in more than 90 nations in the world makes it particularly interesting how it has enabled the smooth running and integration of its international operations. The explanation for its success is entailed in the project management processes undertaken in the organization (Slack, Brandon-Jones, & Johnston, 2017). As such, an understanding of the integrated processes including risk management, knowledge management, success factors and maturity and operations management, will work towards creating a comprehensive elaboration of how the multinational organization was able to achieve success. This paper seeks to analyze the above-integrated processes in a detailed and specific manner.
Knowledge Management
Honeywell has achieved international success due to its effective knowledge management procedures. The company has utilized a set of mechanisms that have worked towards providing common ground for the institutionalizing of best practices and knowledge sharing in the organization. As a rule, knowledge sharing practices help an organization of an immense size such as Honeywell to collaborate all their operations in an appropriate manner (Donate & Snchez, 2015). Ideally, an organization of the same size as Honeywell ought to ensure that knowledge management standards and practice accomplish the required needs of the collaboration of international operations. Knowledge management is therefore conducted in the following set up at Honeywell. Honeywell boats of an integrated knowledge management process. It entails different support centres that ensure that knowledge sharing is of the required level. These centres include control room consolidation, remote support centres, centralized performance management and collaboration centres also known as integrated operations (Honeywell Process, 2017). All these support centre work towards maintaining the top standards of knowledge sharing within the organization.
Control room consolidation centres have the objectives of creating common work practices, performing centralized systems support, focusing on resource efficiencies and lowering support costs. These objectives are pertinent to the existence of this support all over the world. The significance of the actions performed by these centres lies in the eventual consolidation of several operations centres into a single operations centre and control room. The expected outcome of the control room consolidating centres is to enable the improvement of organizational best practices through improved ergonomics and building (Honeywell Process, 2017). Furthermore, there is the controlling of system best practice through the establishment of operator best practice requirements on both the systems and physical level. The overall vision of the control room consolidation centres is to achieve better operational performance through the improvement of best practices.
Remote support centres are also a unique component of the knowledge management process at Honeywell. Ideally, the objectives of this component entail the establishment of a higher value at the application level, improvement of sustainability and establishment of standard practices. These are achieved through conducting a real-time analysis at an Information technology level for the active deployment and monitoring of key technical applications and functions. The eventual outcomes of the above processes include people efficiency, organizational change and the standardization of applications and platforms (Honeywell Process, 2017).
Centralized performance management is another aspect of knowledge management that has enabled the company to achieve business success in a global perspective. Ideally, this function of knowledge management is geared towards enabling the analysis of the real-time analysis of Information Technology for active monitoring of primary requirements for performance management processes. The objectives of centralized performance management functions include the attainment of centralized performance optimization, operations support, long-term trend analysis and creation of systems for unit optimization and operational best practices. The expected outcome of the centralized performance management function of knowledge management at Honeywell entails the establishment of sustainable practices that create competitive advantages, organizational changes and creation of strong business drivers (Honeywell Process, 2017).
Lastly, collaboration centres also known as integrated centres are used at Honeywell to improve the processes of knowledge management. The core activities of these centres entail the collaboration of operations, reliability, and production management into a comprehensive network of collaboration centres to redefine workflows and improve the performance of work process flows (Honeywell Process, 2017). The main objectives of activities undertaken by collaboration centres entail the delivery of information as data in context, to enable collaboration across the organization and a solid network infrastructure design. The eventual outcome of the collaboration centres is perceived to be business transformation enabled by proper management of knowledge.
Risk Management
The existing type of risk management that is implemented at Honeywell Incorporated entails the handling of different type of risks in a separate way by different departments of the organization. This method of managing risk was enabled by the collaborative effort of the organization with insurance specialists, auditors and insurance underwriters (Lam, 2014). The objective of their collaborative effort was the creation of a more efficient risk management strategy that would be implemented for managing the company’s risks. The underlying framework of the proposed system was an idea that would enable the combined protection of Honeywell currency risks as well as other types of risks using an integrated risk management program. The integrated risk management program was based on a risk management review of Honeywell incorporation. The risk management review included various types of risk such as property risk, currency risk, interest rate risk, environmental risk, business risk, liability risk, pension risk, credit risk, legal risk, political risk and directors and officer’s risk (Lam, 2014). The risk management review indicates that the majority of risks were derived from existing financial priorities.
Essentially, Treasury played a very significant role in the risk management strategy implemented at Honeywell Incorporated. The incorporation of Treasury into the risk management strategy enabled the achievement of a specific risk management objective which was the minimization of the costs of risks and the volatility of the earnings. Ideally, this created an integrated risk management portfolio (Lam, 2014). The eventual outcome of the integrated program is known as the treasury-based integrated risk management program. This new program was envisioned to enable the establishment of a risk management structure that provided optimal results. The new integrated approach was also envisioned to enable the use of a standard approach to determining the optimal level of insurance that can be adapted to meet the requirements that existed between the different types of risks. The eventual proposal was deemed significant in a variety of ways which enabled its implementation into the company’s risk management program. Honeywell established an integrated risk management program that had a unique framework of a strategy that was multi-layered insurance based. The strategy was envisioned to cover all traditionally insured currency translation risk and global risk in a single master insurance policy.
The main components of the proposed risk strategy that was initially proposed but later implemented included the specific risks and other risks pertinent to the operation of the company in a global perspective. Ideally, the integrated risk management focused on the goals of the organization and the risks that could negatively affect the accomplishment of these goals. The new strategy was very different from the previously employed strategy which entailed on mitigating different risk events that were bound to occur.
The basis of integrated risk management was the connected nature of every risk in the sense that there is not independent risk in an organization as each risk is connected to the other and thus they do not stand alone (Lam, 2014). Furthermore, every risk has their own value, and the risks and goals are connected. The growth of the company made it possible for the deployment of the integrated risk management program. The reason is that as the company expanded the risks in each department grew significantly. In view of this, there were so many risks that existed within the company. Therefore, the ideal risk management process was the integrated approach that visualized the goals of the company with the control of the existing risks (Lam, 2014).
Operations Management
Honeywell has a unique operations management program that cuts across the realm of all the operations of the organization. The operations management program was site situated. This meant that it supported site work processes that were ideally related to various functions of the organization (Stevenson, 2018). These functions include standard operating limits, managing planning targets and monitoring of the planned targets and limits. The orchestration of the operations management program entailed the fusion of the organizational functions as defined by the site work processes. Honeywell maintained a unique set of facilities that enabled the management of operation across all their branes in the world. These facilities included the software family that enables the achievement of operational excellence goals, improvement of safety, operating within the set limits of production facilities and increased efficiency (Marchewka, 2012).
Research conducted by the Abnormal Situation Management (ASM) Consortium (Marchewka, 2015) shows that significant equipment failure is often due to problems caused by the operation over the planned limits of production facilities. The research also indicates that the best way to avoid such abnormal situations can be achieved through the implementation of operations management software. The Operation management software enables the avoidance of abnormal situations in three main ways. First, the software enables the keeping track of the daily operations of the organization in the various production facilities. By keeping track of operations on a daily basis, there would be the provision of sharing of sufficient information among the staff members (Schwalbe, 2016). This positively affected the conduct of the operations in a continuous manner. The incoming staff shift was, therefore, able to get the full details of the operations and thus enable them to understand the current state of the operations. This ensured that staff shift changes occurred in a smooth and flexibles manner that was void of any interruptions due to lack of enough information regarding ongoing operations. Secondly, the operations management software enabled the automation of the communication of the operating plan. This automated communication process produced positive results by enabling the flow of information in a conscious manner that enabled every staff member to be informed of what was to be done, in what way it would be done and at what time should it be done. The software, therefore, enabled the reduction of errors due to lack of proper communication and misinformation of staff members (Marchewka, 2012). The eventual outcome of the automation of communication was the increase in profitability of the operations.
Lastly, the operation management software enabled the identification of errors and problems. Ideally, every operation plan or the implementation of the plan was due to undergo some problems or contain errors in the detailed activities that are involved. The lack of identifying these problems in a timely manner would amount to a more significant problem that would eventually reduce the profitability of the operation (Schwalbe, 2016). In an effort to reduce such negative aspects of the operations, the software manages to identify the existing errors and problems in a timely manner that enables effective and efficient response to the findings. This would eventually result in the increased or rather improved reliability and operating efficiency for the benefit of the organization.
Success Factors and Maturity
The success factors of Honeywell enabled it to improve the success rate of the projects effectively. These success factors are attributed to be conventional management practices that are implemented for the particular aim of attaining success in project management (de, Ribeiro, & Cortimiglia, 2014). Correspondingly, the level of maturity of any Honeywell is indicated by the degree to which these management practices have been established in an organization and implemented or embedded into the core functions of the organization. Generally, there are many factors that are linked to the various management practices that ensure the success of projects undertaken by a company (de, Ribeiro, & Cortimiglia, 2014). However, in the view of Honeywell, the following factors persist to be true to their operations and successfulness of their projects.
First, the definition of clear organizational objectives and goals. This factor enables the project management team to be one the same level of operation by having a clear picture of the expected goal and the specific objectives that are to be achieved through the process of accomplishing the project (de, Ribeiro, & Cortimiglia, 2014).
Secondly, the maintenance of a clear focus or emphasis on the business value of the project. It is ideal for a project team to be able to ensure that the business value of any project is maintained from the start to the end (de, Ribeiro, & Cortimiglia, 2014). By ensuring the business value is not tainted, the project stands to be economically viable for the organization. Therefore, a project is expected to be more successful when its business value is maintained than when it is not.
Thirdly, the implementation of an appropriate governance structure. A proper governance structure is regarded as one of the fundamental practices that often guarantee the success of any project undertaken by an organization (de, Ribeiro, & Cortimiglia, 2014). In Honeywell, there exists a clear implementation of sound leadership in the perspective of a governance structure. The coordination of projects undertaken by Honeywell is therefore clearly guided as the governance structure is comprehensive and ideal to the organization’s operations. Therefore, the existence of a proper governance structure has enabled the success of Honeywell Incorporation.
Fourthly, Honeywell has ensured the commitment of their senior managers. The senior manager is a critical component of any organizational structure. Their importance is tied to the significance of sound leadership structure to an organization of similar size as Honeywell incorporation (de, Ribeiro, & Cortimiglia, 2014). Ideally, the more suited and committed the senior management, the forward-minded the organization becomes. Senior management level of commitment enables the operations of the organization to be conducted in a manner that holds true to the mission, vision, objectives and strategic goals of the organization. Consequently, the commitment of senior managers is ideal for the success of project undertaken by any organization.
Lastly, communication is a significant component that ensures success in the field of project management. Ideally, every project runs on a specific timeline or schedule. The schedule entails a set of unique activities that act in a collaborative effort to achieve the objectives and the goals of the project (Kerzner, 2017). Therefore, timely communication and clarity of communication are particularly important for an organization to achieve success in its operations.
Conclusion
Indeed, project management at Honeywell entails a few significant components that drive the operational success of the organization. Key components such a knowledge management and risk management work towards the effective communication of information concerning core operations and the culmination of integrated risk to reduce the overall risk of the company respectively. Moreover, the maturity of the different success factors of project undertaking is significant to the achieving wholesome organizational success. Ideally, operations management, together with the three components have indicated how companies such as Honeywell Incorporation have attained success in their operation in a global perspective. The integration of these key components has created a comprehensive understanding of the unique approach Honeywell has implemented in achieving successful project management activities.
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