I have heard that Honeywell has decided to give up on the Intelligrated customers and will be shutting down Intelligrated before the end of the year. Hopefully your projects will be completed before then. Review your legal documentation now!
29 replies (most recent on top)
I've worked at this Saint Louis location for a couple of decades, since FKI Logistics. My feeling is Honeywell never had the intention to keep things humming over here. The minute they had total control, all the terrible mismanagement started and has yet to stop. People fired, laid off, furloughed, whatever. There's a steady stream of talent going out and no one coming in. The once bustling front office and manufacturing floor, 3 shifts mind you, are near silent. There's whole big sections of office they don't even turn the lights on. It feels like death in this place. The writings on the wall folks, one way or another the Saint Louis plant is going to die. Honeywell will never make the mistake of letting their intentions known to us, the deplorable trade workers. My very best advise is to get out quick, before you're competing with your work buddies for the few decent jobs left in this armpit of a city.
St Louis can go bye -bye. They were so lazy that you had to look twice to see them move once. If they did have to perform work you could hear the crying in West Chester. As far as skills, I never saw it. If West Chester would have had access to the same server for the information everyone would see just how lame and unproductive St Louis is. Buh Bye - Lol...
Is this just rumours or Honeywell is really trying to sell Intelligrated ? Any insights ?
@hrz
You can bet that it is more than what they paid for it. To accept less would be a loss. No matter how much they have extracted from us. What a bunch of losers and frauds
@hezh
This scares me. If Honeywell can't sell us then we will be beaten unmercifully until they give up and close us. Selling us for less than an exorbitant price will look like a failure. Honeywell, like politicians, can't admit any kinds of failure or inadequacy.
What is the Intelligrated asking price, anyone know?
It is highly possible that some potential buyers have already walked away ;)
Before any company buys Intelligrated, they need to look at what is left of human IP. I keep seeing some many individuals with knowledge from FKI Logistex and Intelligrated leave the company, I wonder how much knowledge is really left. The new owners need to ask how many senior individuals from these legacy companies are still left. Even though Honeywell bought Intelligrated in 2016, they did not get to sink their teeth into the business until 2018 because Jim and Chris were still controlling the company.
Any insight as to why they would not want the St. Louis facility? Are they not interested in their product line?
@7ojp
This really hurts me. The St. Louis employees have been long time palletizer people and they know these machines inside and out. There are skills here that will not be easily replaced. Even with the IP going to somewhere else, there will definitely issues with getting restarted. We have many overhead cranes, laser cutters, and the such to continue building these magnificent machines. Alvey palletizers are the best in the world and Honeywell has done their best to destroy us. Another American company sacrificed to benefit the executives of Honeywell. Honeywell is an un-American POS company.
I hope Trew would buy Intelligrated. But only problem is that they want their factory in West Chester. And Honeywell wants them to buy 3 factories West Chester, St. Louis and one other. They then would not offer a new contract to St. Louis next year, close it and move the equipment to West Chester. Sell the property since they are improving the area around it the St. Louis plant. Mostly due to Honeywell failure to bring in new employees and hold on to their present employees. Failure to bring in customers to buy their machines. They have layoff thousands of workers and spent over 100 million in severance pay. The St Louis employees would have the biggest loss of because of the out come.
No one really knows, its all rumors at this point. Anyone who has concrete knowledge of any negotiations are probably not going to be posting the details here...
What level of confidence did this word of mouth come with? Obviously those conversions would be happening but saying by EOY would imply that it is decided and going to be actioned upon very soon.
Also, I've not heard anything about IGS sale negotiations - who are potential buyers and how long have those talks been ongoing?
Interesting point, if they were just to shut shop they could still quietly sell off the remaining IP to get some money back at least.
HW seems like the type of company that would prefer to try to quietly close Intelligrated than to sell (ie lose) to one of their competitors. For those still there, hopefully that is not the case, but given the actions I saw in my time, I would not be surprised. They obviously care more about execs than the common worker, and it would be a huge blow to the execs to have to say we don’t know what we’re doing so you can have it now. Might even be more financially beneficial (tax write off) for them to take a loss on Intelligrated over selling for far less than they paid. And for the competitors, what would they even be buying at this point? As mentioned, HW has already destroyed Intelligrated’s customer base and all of the most experienced & knowledgeable workers are already gone as well. Maybe it’s worth it if getting certain patents, etc. were part of the deal, other than that maybe it’s too little too late, they should’ve sold before completely destroying it
@4rdw
Very well put. Honeywell had no idea as to how to execute the type of projects that Intelligrated does. They seem to think that they could just bring any Joe Blow and do the same thing. I hope that they now realize their errors. In Intelligrated and Alvey, we had a common knowledge that extended from top to bottom and that was crucial to executing the custom projects that we have done over the past decades. A simple MBA doesn't teach this. This is coming from an MBA.
So long as Intelligrated is under Honeywell's thumb, it will be destined for disaster. Honeywell bought a new toy without reading the owner's manual first. The best course of action is to return it to its rightful owners and walk away. The more they try to "fix" things, the worse it'll get.
Intelligrated's customer base has been destroyed by Honeywell. There are so many major customers that won't even let a Honeywell person on site. If these customers needed support, there were not people available to support them so Honeywell said give us a bunch of money and we will send someone without any experience when they are available. It is really sad what Honeywell's pursuit of profits over everything else has done to Intelligrated. Honeywell treats project related business as if it is a widget business. Plus Honeywell hasn't been honest with several of the largest customers.
There's plenty of value left in Intelligrated. Its certainly not worth 1.5B worth anymore, but good products, customer base, decent IP etc. is worth something.
@2nze
I imagine that if Honeywell can't sell it, they'd shut it down and sell any property they can. I am sure Honeywell wants to bury their latest obvious failure.
What do you mean “shutting down Intelligrated”. Are they going to just close the doors and get rid of everyone. Or are they going to sell/spin off?
Was introduced to the new IGS VP. Doesn't come across of as an individual of high calibre nor intention to keep the business running. Reeks of signs that he is here to wind up some sites and consolidate them small enough that it makes no sense to keep the business intact. He was from Aero and the only muttered words was how cost were maintained and dissent curtailed. Probably got the job cos' of his obedience to his masters.
Trew has already tried to buy the West Chester manufacturing facility. If IGS is a good price, they might buy back their old company and purge it of toxic Honeywell folks. They already have two big investors who recognize that Trew knows how to run a material handling business. It would be interesting to see what happens.
Who is buying Intelligrated ? Trew ?
They'd better complete any sale quickly, no customers are going to want to put in an order with company for sale.
Executive comp is fine. 6 million is the cost of 60-150 employees. Who cares. This isn’t a Popeyes franchise in North Carolina.
Intelligrated is one of the coolest businesses honeywell has. Try explaining Honeywell to the average person. Average person. Average person. That has a ring to it.
If it is who I am thinking of, I hope they get it too. It would be nice to know that the 112 year old company that I have dedicated myself to for over 30+ years now, will go on after me. Otherwise, I am convinced that Honeywell is a destroyer of companies. In their pursuit of executive compensation. There should be no reason that an executive's yearly compensation increase should exceed the entire career earnings of a degreed engineer. Those guys have no unique skill that is special to the entire population. Heck, I can do a better job than John Boy has ever done. Don't care about his education or experience.
I understand sale negotiation is still ongoing. Hope a certain someone is gonna get that IP cheap, good!