The SCMR Interview: Torsten Pilz, Chief Supply Chain Officer at Honeywell

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the March-April 2021 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

March-April 2021

Last night, my wife and I shared a socially distanced bonfire with a few friends. One was a retired physician who is spearheading the vaccination effort in the small New Hampshire city where I live. New Hampshire has had its challenges getting needles into arms like everywhere else, but it seems as if we’re breaking through the log jam. For example, between week 1 and week 3, they’ve tripled the number of people they can vaccinate in a day, and they’ve expanded from five days a week to seven days a week. At least for now, there has not been a shortage of vaccines. I know there is a long way to go, but you can feel it picking up speed. Call me…

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In 2019, Supply Chain Management Review launched the NextGen Supply Chain Awards, recognizing five supply chain leaders as well as five supply chain solution providers that had made noteworthy strides in the adoption of new technologies in their supply chains. Award winners are recognized at the NextGen Supply Chain Conference.

For 2020, we created the Supply Chain Resiliency award to recognize the efforts of Honeywell during COVID-19. Honeywell is a storied name in U.S. manufacturing across a range of industry verticals—including healthcare. Choosing only one company was not easy—there are a number of companies that went above and beyond to keep operating during the pandemic. We singled out Honeywell not just for exhibiting resiliency, but also for the way it responded to produce much needed personal protective equipment (PPE).

To help meet the unprecedented demand in the early months of the pandemic, Honeywell pressed its facilities into action. For instance, the company set up new operations at facilities in Rhode Island and Arizona to produce disposable N-95 masks. Normally, an operation like this would take nine months to set up. Honeywell was in production in only five weeks. Together, the two plants are producing millions of N-95 masks per month for health care workers, emergency responders and other critical health care needs. The shift also resulted in an estimated 1,000 new jobs during a time of rising unemployment.

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