PlantSuccess 2011 Northeastt
Leading Strategies for
Sustainable Operating Excellence
The Hotel du Pont, Wilmington, Del.
November 3, 2011

 

Brett Able joined Honeywell Specialty Materials in January 2009 as vice president, integrated supply chain. Specialty Materials, a strategic business group of Honeywell based in Morristown, N.J., with $4.7 billion in revenues in 2010, is a global leader in providing customers with high-performance specialty materials, including fluorine products; specialty films and additives; advanced fibers and composites; intermediates; specialty chemicals; electronic materials and chemicals; and technologies and materials for petroleum refining.

Brett has management oversight for all of Specialty Materials' supply chain operational activities - covering plan, source, make and deliver - and functional support, including process and project engineering; health, safety and environment; and process safety. Before he joined Honeywell, he was corporate vice president and chief engineer for Dow Corning Corporation, responsible for overseeing engineering capabilities to support existing and future expansions. He had previously served as Dow Corning's vice president of global supply chains.

During his nearly 35 years with Dow Corning, Brett held various positions in engineering, business, and operational management - including production, quality, supply, and research and development. He was instrumental in leading that company's efforts to develop supply chain capabilities worldwide, played a crucial role in facilitating solutions selling by promoting contract manufacturing, led reengineering of the acquisitions process and procurement organization, and guided strategic development and implementation of a supply chain strategy for specialty chemicals. Brett was based both in the United States and overseas, including several years in Asia overseeing the engineering, procurement, construction and start-up of a major Dow Corning project and opened an engineering center in Chennai, India. He also spent several years in Tokyo building Dow Corning's Asian supply chain capabilities.

Brett earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Purdue University. He is involved with a number of community service organizations and serves on several boards.

The success of any manufacturing operation is dependent on the company's ability to put in place and grow an innovative and competitive manufacturing capability in today's challenging global economy. Customer requirements continue to change and supply chains will only succeed if we constantly challenge ourselves to create innovative solutions, at our facilities as well as up and down the supply chain, to meet that change. This innovation needs to address not only productivity, but also its impact on safety and our company's bottom line.

Honeywell will share its unique three horizon approach toward maximizing current capabilities and expanding plant productivity. We will examine how this philosophy is being applied in our own supply chain, together with the Honeywell Operating System, in both developed and developing economies.