Tucson: Profile of Honeywell

Local Honeywell plant has international reach

Nearly every airline in the world utilizes Tucson-made parts



By Dan Sorenson

ARIZONA DAILY STAR

When US Airways Flight 1549’s engines choked on a flock of geese in January, an auxiliary gas tur­bine- powered generator in the back of the Airbus A320 kept the control surfaces, lights and instru­ments working while Capt. Ches­ley Sullenberger and co-pilot Jeff Skiles looked for a place to put the plane down.

The controller on that power unit was made right here in Tuc­son.

“That’s something we’re pretty proud of,” said Kurt A. Miller, site leader at Honeywell Aerospace, 11100 N. Oracle Road.

Chances are good that workers at Honeywell Aerospace-Tucson will have had a hand in making your flight safer or more comfort­able no matter what kind of plane you’re on, though rarely that dra­matically.

The 740 workers in the plant at the foot of the Santa Catalinas’ west end make, repair and over­haul a lot of parts that commercial, general aviation and military fliers frequently depend upon, but of which they are seldom aware: cab­in air-pressure equipment, elec­tronic engine control systems and sensors, electronic power genera­tion system components, sensitive quartz pressure sensors, smoke detectors, circuit boards.

Outside, in the central plaza that connects several large, modern buildings, Honeywell Aerospace­Tucson could pass for a college campus.

But inside most of the buildings, security and safety measures — se­cure doors controlled by card swipes, warnings about the need for safety shoes and goggles, and floors marked with yellow and black-striped tape — leave no doubt there’s highly regulated, in­dustrial manufacturing work going on here.

Blue smocks, hard-toe shoes and safety glasses are required in most areas. A tour of the plant re­veals a lot of devices you’d rarely see anywhere else.

Cabin pressure control systems, one of Honeywell’s main product lines, require some highly specialized equipment. There are huge pressure tanks where high alti­tude can be simulated for testing cabin pressure valves. Some are small, for cor­porate jets. Some are massive, like those for the Air Force C-130s that growl across Tucson skies every day.

The valves are designed to maintain healthful air pressure for the humans in­side those thin-walled metal tubes hurtling through the air at several hundred miles per hour, miles above sea level, where the outside air is cold and the oxy­gen scarce. Engines compress outside air and push it into the passenger compart­ment, requiring the valves to release just the right amount to maintain tolerable pressure for the crew and passengers.

In another area of the plant, there’s the smell of incense. It’s used to test smoke detectors for airliner baggage compart­ments. The guts of the detectors are housed in large, metal boxes, painted a bland medium green. They’ve got to know the difference between smoke and dust. A false alarm could send an airliner to the nearest airport for an emergency landing. Failure to detect real smoke would be much worse.

In yet another area, quartz pressure sensors are made. A technician uses a mi­croscope to guide a soldering tool that at­taches hair-thin gold wires to the back of the sensor.

The quartz sensors made here can measure an altitude change of just a foot by detecting the change in air pressure, says Roberto Hoffman, manager of elec­tronics and quartz operations.

In an area with more familiar-looking parts, workers “R&O” — repair and over­haul — auxiliary power units’ components like the gear that helped bring the 155 crew and passengers on Flight 1549 back to earth safely.

It should go without saying that much, if not most, of the work done here has seri­ous — sometimes life and death — impli­cations. When something fails in an auto­mobile, somebody might be late for work. At worst, certain parts failures could cause a serious accident involving a few people. When aircraft parts fail, planes and pas­sengers can fall from the sky.

There are inspectors, inspections of in­spections, tests and quality control sys­tems galore, throughout the Honeywell plant.

The Honeywell operating system, the Honeywell way of doing things right, or getting them right as soon as possible, is based on the famed Toyota production system “and is derived from Six Sigma, Lean concepts,” says Miller, the Tucson operation’s site leader. (Miller recently an­nounced he is leaving Honeywell. He is being replaced by interim team leader Paul Toma, the plant’s director of quality.) Six Sigma is a measure of quality that strives for near-perfection, and the Lean methodology, derived mostly from the Toyota production system, is a manage­ment philosophy with a set of tools to identify and remove waste.

The idea is not to place blame, just get it done right or, if necessary, get it fixed.

But Miller says his day starts with things that didn’t get fixed further down the management chain.

Managers meet every morning with un­resolved problems, moving up levels until, if necessary, it winds up “in my office,” he says.

The problems that end up in his office probably started off the afternoon before as a red disc on one of the white boards that are on the walls throughout the work areas.

Besides manufacturing and administra­tion, Honeywell’s Tucson campus also has engineers involved in design and customer service — the customers being mainly air­lines and the U.S. military.

Nearly every airline in the world, at least those flying most Boeing or Airbus air­craft, probably owns some Honeywell equipment and is a customer.

Contact reporter Dan Sorenson at 573-4185 or dsorenson@azstarnet.com