The manufacturer of the two black boxes, which were badly damaged, is a business giant that started by "buying, buying, buying".

On April 20, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) released the "Preliminary Report on the Investigation of the Flight Accident of the MU5735 Aircraft of China Eastern Airlines on March · 21". According to the report, the two recorders on board were severely damaged due to the impact, and data restoration and analysis work is still ongoing.

Since the accident, the recorder (commonly known as the "black box") has attracted much attention.

In the course of each search, the question "why are black boxes so hard to find?" always brings Honeywell, the manufacturer of black boxes, into the spotlight. Honeywell said in a statement on March 24 that it stood ready to support the black box investigation if requested.

The last time Honeywell was so noticeable was in the early days of the pandemic in 2020.

At that time, there was a huge increase in demand for (K)N95 masks. Honeywell and 3M's (K)N95 masks have become sought-after goods, but compared to 3M, Honeywell's masks are cheaper, and dealers are severely punished for raising prices without permission.

Whether it's a (K)N95 mask or a black box, it's the real Honeywell, but it's not the whole Honeywell.

As an out-and-out "crossover maniac", Honeywell's business ranges from parts for lunar rockets, quantum computers, to aircraft cockpit control systems and (K)N95 masks, from the production of products that control a single indicator, to the control of the upstream and downstream of the industry, and then to the control of multiple industries.

As of February 2022, Honeywell still ranked 94th among Fortune 500 companies with full-year revenue of $32.6 billion, even though the pandemic hit the company's largest aerospace parts business, causing its revenue to decline 11.1% year-over-year.

Along the way, the expansion method of the world's top 100 supergiants is, in a word, "buy, buy, buy".

Scolding when you can't find the black box

Honeywell is already a huge crossover giant, but it usually keeps a low profile. As the world's largest manufacturer of black boxes, Honeywell is always blamed after every crash — and while people blame airlines and aircraft manufacturers, they also blame Honeywell's black box technology for not being advanced enough to be difficult to find and difficult to decipher.

In fact, it is also difficult for aircraft manufacturers to get rid of the "control freaks" of this industry. Honeywell produces 30 percent of the parts in every Boeing aircraft, and even the autopilot systems that ensure the safety of the vast majority of aircraft are developed by Honeywell.

Since 2019, Airbus has tried to develop a new system that stores data records inside the panels of the aircraft's enclosures. The panel will detach in the event of an accidental landing of the aircraft and activate the radio beacon.

This preserves information and tells search and rescue personnel and the exact location of the plane crash, but the system has not yet made much progress.

Ever since the first black box was used on de Havilland's first human jetliner in 1953, Honeywell claims to have continued to improve its technology, upgrading from tape recordings to today's solid-state storage.

But as key evidence of the truth about air crashes, the black box has only had four explicit iterations in the past 70 years.

An engineer involved in the design and manufacture of the aircraft told the Times that in the current business structure, there will be no new companies to invest in the research and development of new black boxes, because it is difficult for emerging companies to enter the procurement list of aircraft manufacturers.

In other words, even if a better black box is developed, no one will necessarily pay for it.

And as a traditional black box manufacturer, the drive to continue to invest billions of dollars in technology research and development every year is not strong. "After all, historically, air crashes are still a small probability event." The engineer said.

The implication is that the products of black box manufacturers now have a stable market, and even if they continue to invest billions every year, the sales of the products will not increase; If you don't put in, you won't get smaller.

Highlight reel moments

Honeywell's market position is won by the accumulation of technology and highlight moments over the past few decades.

During World War II, Honeywell developed tank periscopes, camera stabilizers, and the C-1 autopilot system for aircraft. The invention of the C-1 system led to the formation of aircraft precision bombing tactics, which were eventually used in the two B-29 bombers that dropped atomic bombs on Japan in 1945 in United States.

The success of these projects led Minnie Honeywell to open an aviation division in Chicago in 1942 to formally enter the development of aircraft-related systems and parts. The following year, Honeywell acquired Intervox's sonar, ultrasound and telemetry technology and used it on United States' first nuclear submarine.

During the Cold War, as the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union escalated, Honeywell's orders were also upgraded from aircraft parts to rocket parts.

In 1969, when humans first landed on the moon, Apollo 11, which carried three astronauts including Armstrong, had 14 electronic devices and 16,000 parts from Honeywell.

After these highlights, Honeywell has finally been recognized by the aircraft manufacturing industry for a long time.

It is worth mentioning that Honeywell also provided flight control, autopilot and wheel brake systems for China's domestic large aircraft C919. Honeywell previously signed a memorandum of understanding with China Eastern Airlines in September 2021 to upgrade the maintenance and repair capabilities of the Honeywell HGT750 auxiliary power unit (APU) installed on the C919 aircraft.

"Buy, buy, buy"

In 1885, Honeywell, a young United States engineer, bought the Switzerland inventor Butz's heating coal furnace fireplace temperature controller company, and through mergers and acquisitions, Honeywell was born.

Perhaps it was from this beginning that Honeywell was injected into the genes of mergers and acquisitions. Since going public in 1927, Honeywell, with $3.5 million in assets, has spread its tentacles to the entire United States heating industry, starting with fireplace temperature controllers. In addition to integrating a number of United States water heater and pipe suppliers, it also became the largest manufacturer of clock and meter controllers in the United States at that time by virtue of its sophisticated technology in temperature control systems, and began to enter the control system of industrial production, and also opened a business in United Kingdom, Canada and Netherlands.

In 1999, the "control freak" Honeywell was acquired by another giant, United Signal, but the combined company name was retained as "Honeywell". Not just the name, but also the genes of the expansion through acquisitions were preserved, and Honeywell's footprint expanded into the aerospace, auto parts and chemical sectors.

In the 21st century, the frenzied expansion of "control freak" Honeywell was blocked by antitrust regulation for the first time.

Wilch, then CEO of General Electric and a master of management, made a takeover offer to Honeywell, which was valued at more than $21 billion. If the two companies merge successfully, they will become a supergiant spanning multiple industries such as aerospace, automotive, petrochemicals, financial services, etc.

At the time, the United States Department of Justice approved the merger but was blocked by the European Commission.

The manufacturer of the two black boxes, which were badly damaged, is a business giant that started by "buying, buying, buying".

For Airbus, a local European aircraft manufacturing giant, once the two companies merge, Airbus's aircraft manufacturing, from engines to driving systems, will only be purchased from this one company.

The European Union succeeded in preventing GE from buying Honeywell to become a supergiant, but it failed to prevent Honeywell from buying other companies to make itself a giant.

From 2002 to 2015, Honeywell, the "control freak", successfully conducted more than 80 mergers and acquisitions and more than 60 business divestitures. These include the acquisition of United Kingdom building materials supplier Novar to enter the construction industry, the acquisition of a 50% stake in the petrochemical division of Dow Chemical to establish Honeywell Global Petroleum Products to consolidate its position in the chemical industry, and the acquisition of a number of water, gas and electricity meter control companies in the United Kingdom, France and the United States to develop the control system of the old bank.

In recent years, Honeywell, which has been operating well for a long time, has also begun to extend its tentacles into the high-tech field.

In March 2020, Honeywell announced the development of a quantum computer and is also working with Carnegie Mellon University's National Center for Robotics Engineering to build sorting robots for supply chain upgrades. Along the way, Honeywell has also developed automated solutions for distribution and warehousing, harvesting large orders from Amazon during the pandemic.

Today, Honeywell has strong control across aerospace, construction, chemicals, performance materials, industrial production and supply chains.

The manufacturer of the two black boxes, which were badly damaged, is a business giant that started by "buying, buying, buying".

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