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Vimal Kapur

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68
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2026-05-22
most recent
2026-05-22
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1
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  1. “Down the line, now you fast forward 50 years before AI and data science came in, the people who were running these equipment or automation system or different facilities in different environment think of a pharma manufacturing facility or a data center, they acquired a knowledge on the exceptions which were occurring in those operating conditions. But when they retire or they move on, their knowledge went along with them. So when the next set of people came in, they kind of have the same learning cycle. Maybe some of it was captured in some documents, some manuals, but not a lot. So what AI is solving for is our systems have no intelligence layer on top of the core automation layer so that when the next human being comes in, they're not starting from scratch. They have an advantage of all the learning over the last 25 years all built in. So they get to say when this condition occurred, nine out of ten times this was done.”

    2026-05-22 · Masters in Business · The Future of Automation and AI with Honeywell CEO Vimal Kapur · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Gets back to the desired condition, what it wants it to be is a logic based. And the assumption was most of the time this will work. In a normal situation when exception occurs, human will take a call. So automation systems were always designed with the human in the loop. And human was supposed to take care of change in input condition, change in output conditions, maintain the equipment, take care of maintenance requirement.”

    2026-05-22 · Masters in Business · The Future of Automation and AI with Honeywell CEO Vimal Kapur · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “So I would say we have to go back to where the automation industry started from to better appreciate how will AI impact automation offerings or automation products. Go back to mid-70s when this industry got created somewhere in mid-75 time frame when computing was invented, chips were invented. There came the need to say the word has a lot of these expensive assets. Those assets are not running very efficiently. So can we move from the older technologies, which were kind of World War I, World War II, war era, to more modern digital technologies. And the way automation system was created was that you sense a set of properties and how a particular equipment or a machine or a processor is running. And then you have a software program running in a computer, which is going to make sure that it”

    2026-05-22 · Masters in Business · The Future of Automation and AI with Honeywell CEO Vimal Kapur · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “So, growth culture is important, which means we have to be more externally focused now. We need to understand our markets, need to understand our customers, what's changing, need to understand our competition. So our company, even though name preserves itself as a heritage, but it has been constantly evolving itself, and that's one of the reasons this company has survived 120 years because it has courage to reinvent itself versus being inward-looking and always saying that, okay, we are what we are and we are not going to change.”

    2026-05-22 · Masters in Business · The Future of Automation and AI with Honeywell CEO Vimal Kapur · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Digital backbone of the company, simplifying honeywell in terms of internal systems we have. Darius was very passionate about digital, on how to mine data and create more capability for our customers. So he created a culture of more operational excellence, more operational rigor, while Dave was much more focused on one honeywell mindset, culture integration, not multiple companies. And as my tenure comes in over the last two plus years, we are now pivoting from the more growth-oriented company. And the reason that's important is that over a period of time, our margin rates have grown up and we were sub 10% margin company in 2005, 2006. Last date was 23%. So our earnings growth is going to come more from the top line growth versus margin expansion. Not that we want to do margin expansion, but we can't get from another 15%. There's no headroom.”

    2026-05-22 · Masters in Business · The Future of Automation and AI with Honeywell CEO Vimal Kapur · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Yep. So a little bit of fun fact, a light signal acquired Honeywell and changed its name to Honeywell. Which doesn't happen. The choir keeps his name because they figured Honeywell brand was so powerful and was more impactful so they changed their own name. So that was a big moment, your question on cultural assimilation of two large companies. It was kind of merger of equals. It did go through its own motion of ups and downs. And that's when Dave Cody came in as chairman and CEO of Honeywell. And Dave did a great job to rebuild the Coney Honeywell culture, which was much more one company mindset. We are not two companies. We are one company. We're going to work towards one stock, one Honeywell mindset, put a lot of operational culture in the organization. So that was one phase of under her leadership. Then my predecessor, Darius Adamchek, he became CEO in 2017. He further enhanced our operational excellence skill. He invested a lot of effort to build more.”

    2026-05-22 · Masters in Business · The Future of Automation and AI with Honeywell CEO Vimal Kapur · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Yeah, it evolved a lot. I would say there was a big change movement in early 2000 when Honeywell and Allite signal merged together.”

    2026-05-22 · Masters in Business · The Future of Automation and AI with Honeywell CEO Vimal Kapur · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Different animals in the sense of the end market say, sir, right? There are some commonality of the business models. And there's a common denominator, but there are differences which really led me to think about whether we are good to be one company or multiple companies when I started as a CEO. And part of it was the differences between them, but part of it was opportunities which is ahead of us, that how these businesses independently could shape or scale much differently versus when we are together, which led us to do a lot of work to think about optionality and pros and cons of each option, and which led us to make a decision that we are better off to split into three companies.”

    2026-05-22 · Masters in Business · The Future of Automation and AI with Honeywell CEO Vimal Kapur · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “So that got added into my responsibility. So there was a lot of learning there on how that industry works, which is totally different from everything else I had done.”

    2026-05-22 · Masters in Business · The Future of Automation and AI with Honeywell CEO Vimal Kapur · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “I mean, I think at that time, the biggest challenge that time actually was the chip shortages. And how do we really redesign our products because chips are simply not available, so you really have to learn how do we redesign our products in a much shorter period of time. So think about if we design a product in one year, we had to do that in two months because there's no other option. If we don't do that, we can't have an alternative source of supply and we can't ship our product. So I used a lot of experiences on dealing with such different scenario in earlier jobs. And we were able to successfully deal with that. That was also a job I also got exposure to the businesses of Honeywell, which I hadn't run before. Aerospace being the biggest one.”

    2026-05-22 · Masters in Business · The Future of Automation and AI with Honeywell CEO Vimal Kapur · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Performance material and technology, a very interesting business. They build technology, they build energy infrastructure. So if you want to build a, if you are a refiner, you buy crude, which we all hear a lot about today due to ongoing Iran conflict. You don't sell crude, you sell product, you sell gasoline, you sell diesel, you sell jet fuel. So they have options to make multiple products. And as the input changes or the market needs changes, they need to decide what are the options they have to build different offering from their perspective. This business provides technology to energy company to build energy infrastructure because it's a molecule transformation converting one molecule to another molecule that's heavy technology involved behind it. So performance material and technology provides technology.”

    2026-05-22 · Masters in Business · The Future of Automation and AI with Honeywell CEO Vimal Kapur · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Primarily your cushion, this business is all about sophisticated automation in complex facilities. And then I move to the building automation business where we still do automation, but now in this case buildings of different type, hospitals, airports, schools, university campuses, data centers. And there the business model was very different. Now you serve multiple buildings through a variety of channel partners across the world. And so our strength comes through product innovation. Our strength comes through channel management, very different business model compared to what I did in my process automation days.”

    2026-05-22 · Masters in Business · The Future of Automation and AI with Honeywell CEO Vimal Kapur · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Metals and mining. So these facilities are very complex in terms of their operating procedures. And if they're not automated, it's nearly impossible to run them. So this business provides a sophisticated automation system to these large companies. So think about Exxon and Shell and BP as kind of typical customer or Ramco in Middle East and Adnock. So this serving these customer, this business was very global or is very global even today. The business still is very successful. And I became CEO in 2014 of this business. And oil downturn happened within six months of I becoming the leader of the business. So you learn through tough experiences, oil price was from whatever $140, $150 to like a big nosedive. And we did a lot of work in that downturn, learned a lot.”

    2026-05-22 · Masters in Business · The Future of Automation and AI with Honeywell CEO Vimal Kapur · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Materials So, Process Solution Business is, you know, it provides automation system in the energy sector. So energy sector, think about it, refining petrochemical plants, other oil and gas facilities, pipeline terminals, even I would say facilities like Wichmay Paper.”

    2026-05-22 · Masters in Business · The Future of Automation and AI with Honeywell CEO Vimal Kapur · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “How much I mean, I think it's an advantage to, in a way, to work in a practical business because you have to deal with actual problems which the business deal with. And having worked in different businesses gave me an opportunity to deal with the different customer situation, different end markets, operational issue, commercial issue, product development issue, supply chain. So I would say, I mean, there's no replacement to formal education. I'm not suggesting that having a higher degree is a disadvantage. But I would say that there is equal amount of advantage to get practical experience. And I was benefiting from variety of experiences I got in my long career in Honeywell.”

    2026-05-22 · Masters in Business · The Future of Automation and AI with Honeywell CEO Vimal Kapur · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “They turn into what it was planned for because Honeywell did not have its automation business footprint in India at that time. So you're talking 40 years back. So they partnered with a local company to scale the business. They already had those products and capabilities in US and they were trying to get into Asia and they formed partnerships in few countries, India being one of them. And the strategy was to penetrate the local market, develop the local capability, and we were able to do that quite well. So it's not that we have to change our product strategy, but we have to run, learn as we go through. We had intense local competition. How do you beat that? How do we create our own revenue stream there? So it was a very successful story.”

    2026-05-22 · Masters in Business · The Future of Automation and AI with Honeywell CEO Vimal Kapur · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “So they invested in this venture. There's big honeywell with a lot of tech, and then they create this joint venture in which you show up. And it's basically creating something from scratch. We had no revenue when I started. Our revenue was 0.00. So you learn how to build a company, how you scale, you wear multiple hats like in a startup, you don't have a very defined role. So, I think that early experience of high flexibility and going through a very high pace in a short period of time, that laid some very strong foundations for me.”

    2026-05-22 · Masters in Business · The Future of Automation and AI with Honeywell CEO Vimal Kapur · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Original career plan was to work and get a job. That was a career plan. That was a career plan. And first, I did two small stints of a job and then I joined Honeywell in early 89. It was a new company in India just set up. So I ended up joining a startup. Because it was set up as a joint venture between two large companies. There's a large Indian company called Tata Group. They jointly...”

    2026-05-22 · Masters in Business · The Future of Automation and AI with Honeywell CEO Vimal Kapur · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source