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Johnson Controls

Johnson Controls – Electronic And Automotive Parts Company With Operations In Over 150 Countries.

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Johnson Controls is a multinational HVAC, electronic, and automotive parts company with operations in over 150 countries and annual revenue of over $30 billion. Additionally, it offers technical support, energy management advice, and portfolio management services for properties in the non-residential building sector.

About The Company

Johnson Controls is an American multinational corporation with headquarters in Cork, Ireland. The company manufactures security, HVAC, and fire systems for buildings. In 2017, it was ranked 389th in the Fortune Global 500, but now it is no longer eligible for inclusion in the Fortune 500 due to its non-American headquarters.

Johnson Controls
Image source: forbes.com

History

The first electric room thermostat was patented in 1883 by Warren S. Johnson. His creation catalyzed a new business and helped establish the building control sector. To produce, install, and maintain automatic temperature regulating systems for buildings, Johnson founded the Johnson Electric Service Company in 1885 with a group of Milwaukee businessmen led by William Plankinton. The company decided to concentrate on its thermal management business for non-residential buildings after Johnson’s passing in 1911. The corporation acquired the clockmaker Standard Electric Time Company in 1970. In 1974, the company adopted the name Johnson Controls. Johnson Controls purchased the battery manufacturer Globe-Union in 1978. The Standard Electric Time Company was sold to Faraday in the same year. Hoover Universal and Ferro Manufacturing, manufacturers of car seating, were purchased by Johnson Controls in 1985. Keith Wandell, the company’s president, pressed Congress for a bailout of the businesses that Johnson supplied during the recession of 2008–2009. In late March 2010, the Johnson Controls facility in Lakeshore, Ontario, shut down, and the land was thereafter sold.

In 2016, the Johnson Controls Automotive Experience unit of the company was separated into its own publicly traded company, Adient, and started trading on the NYE. It was announced in 2017 that 3M would acquire Scott Safety, the company’s safety equipment division, for $2 billion. In 2021, Johnson Controls announced that Ava Robotics would power its new “Tyco Security Robot.” This completely autonomous security robot combines access control, video surveillance, and security robots by integrating sensors, a touchscreen, and two Tyco Illustra cameras.

Business Units

Building Efficiency and Global WorkPlace Solutions are the two business segments that make up the company’s operations. For both commercial and residential structures, the Building Technologies and Solutions product line develops, manufactures, installs, and provides maintenance for HVAC, industrial refrigeration, building management, fire and security, and mechanical systems. This business unit produces products under the TempMaster, York, Metasys, Frick, Panoptix, and Sabroe brands. The business unit Global WorkPlace Solutions offers outsourced services for facility management all around the world. On behalf of its clients, it also oversees corporate real estate management, which includes purchasing and selling property, maintaining leases, and overseeing building-related initiatives like replacing equipment. In 2015, this unit was acquired by CBRE.

Controversy

In 2016, Johnson Controls and Tyco International announced that they would merge to form Johnson Controls International, an organization with its headquarters in Cork, Ireland. . By integrating with the Irish business, Johnson Controls was able to undergo a tax inversion, which allowed it to transform into an Irish corporation with significantly reduced corporate taxes. The workforce suffered greatly as a result of this restructuring. Hillary Clinton criticized the corporation for trying to use the acquisition to avoid paying taxes in the United States after it had “begged” the administration for financial assistance in 2008. Because Tyco stockholders now held 44% of the business, the Johnson deal, which Fortune magazine called “outrageous,” qualified as a “super inversion” and escapes the penalties the US Department of the Treasury has levied on past inversion deals. The company calculated that by avoiding American taxes, it would save around $150 million a year.

Founder – Warren S. Johnson

Warren S. Johnson. Johnson founded the Johnson Electric Service Company, which later evolved into Johnson Controls, to produce and market his thermostat technology. He was a university lecturer who had difficulty controlling the temperatures in every classroom. The issue was resolved by his multi-zone pneumatic management system. Offices, schools, hospitals, hotels, and practically any large facility with numerous rooms that needed temperature regulation adopted Johnson’s approach for temperature control on a global scale.

CEO – George Oliver

Johnson Controls chairman and CEO is George R. Oliver. Before taking over as CEO, he was the company’s president and COO, in charge of its running operations and in charge of overseeing the merger of Tyco and Johnson Controls.

hisense

Hisense – Producing Electronics Worldwide Over The Past 50 Years.

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Hisense has dedicated itself to creating groundbreaking consumer electronics over the past 50 years. The corporation is currently one of the top producers of electronics worldwide. It has established 54 abroad businesses and offices, uses five top-tier international production sites in Europe, Central America, and South Africa, and has 18 R&D centres internationally. The company has a customer base in over 160 countries.

About The Company

Hisense Group is a global Chinese manufacturer of electronics and major appliances with its headquarters in Shandong Province, China. Hisense’s primary line of business is televisions, and since 2004, it has held the most significant market share among Chinese TV manufacturers. They sell items under the brands Hisense, Gorenje, Toshiba, Sharp, Kelon, and Ronshen. As an OEM, Hisense sells some of its goods to other businesses under brand names unrelated to Hisense. Hisense H.A and Hisense Visual Technology., two significant subsidiaries of the Hisense Group, are publicly listed corporations. By 2020, the state-owned more than 30% of each enterprise through the Hisense holding company. The Hisense Group includes 14 industrial parks with more than 80,000 employees, some of which are situated in Shunde, Huzhou, the Czech Republic, Mexico, and South Africa. Additionally, there are 18 R&D facilities spread across locations like Qingdao, Shenzhen, the US, Germany, Slovenia, Israel, etc.

Hisense
Image source: www.homeappliancesworld.com

History

Hisense Group’s forerunner, Qingdao No.2 Radio Factory, was founded in 1969. The modest factory’s initial offering was a radio marketed under the Red Lantern brand, but thanks to a trial run of black-and-white televisions that the Shandong National Defense Office bought, the business later acquired the know-how to produce TVs. This entailed the specialized training of three workers at a different Chinese factory, Tianjin 712, and led to the creation of transistor TVs by 1975 and the manufacturing of 82 televisions by 1971. In 1978, the CJD18, their debut TV model, was launched. Until 1979, there was little television production in China, but a Beijing session of the Ministry of Electronics urged the growth of the civil-use electronics sector. The Qingdao No.2 Radio Factory then swiftly combined with other regional electronics producers and started producing televisions in Shandong province under the banner Qingdao General Television Factory. In April 1997, the Shanghai Stock Exchange officially listed the Hisense Electrical Appliance Share Holding Company (now known as Hisense Electrical Co Ltd). Hisense benefited from increased rivalry and fierce prices in the Chinese electronics sector in the 1990s by acquiring ten bankrupt businesses by 1998. Hisense Group sought to emerge as a frontrunner in home appliances, computers, and communications in addition to consumer electronics. This policy led to significant financial investments in R&D, the construction of industrial zones, etc. It created a specific kind of translucent 3D television in 2013. In 2015, Sharp sold a Mexican factory to Hisense for $23.7 million, along with the right to use the Sharp name on television sets sold in South and North America. It acquired 95.4% of the shares in Slovenian appliance producer Gorenje in 2018, becoming the company’s largest stakeholder. It unveiled the world’s first 8K 10 bit HDR screen TV in 2020. Its image quality engine boasts 6.5T supercomputing power and is built on an AI-powered HDR algorithm. It declared the introduction of its first 4K Fire TV in May 2022.

Products And Services

Hisense develops white goods, television sets, digital TV broadcasting devices, laptops, set-top boxes, cell phones, wireless components, wireless PC cards, and optical components. In addition, it offers a wide range of services, such as property administration, IT support, product design, mould design, pattern making, and mould processing and production. Furthermore, It is among the few manufacturers of smartphones with an e-ink display.

Founder – Zhou Houjian

After graduating, Zhou Houjian was hired as a technician at the Qingdao Television Factory. He advanced through the ranks, becoming a supervisor, an assistant factory director, and, at age 35, the factory director. Based on his experience at the Qingdao Television factory, Zhou founded Hisense Group in 1994. Today, Hisense Group is one of China’s foremost manufacturers of home appliances, with distribution operations in more than 100 nations.

whirlpool corporation

Whirlpool Corporation – Started With Its First Big Order For 100 Washing Machines.

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Whirlpool Corporation is a popular household name in the arena of laundry and kitchen electronics. Its top-class home appliances make life better at home. Through its iconic brand portfolio, which includes Whirlpool, Maytag, Amana KitchenAid, Consul, Brastemp, JennAir, Bauknecht, Yummly, and Indesit, the company is pushing intentional innovation to address the shifting requirements of customers in an increasingly digital age.

About The Company

Founded in 1911, Whirlpool Corporation is a leading American multinational company in the business of manufacturing and marketing home appliances. It is headquartered in Michigan, USA. The company’s most popular products include washing machines, refrigerators, air conditioners, dishwashers, cooking appliances, etc. It is a Fortune 500 company with having annual revenue of over 21$ billion. The company has over 70 manufacturing and tech research centers worldwide. The company operates in four segments: Asia, North America; Latin America; Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

whirlpool corporation
Image source: ifegate.it

History

Whirlpool Corporation was founded by Louis Upton and Emory Upton in 1911. It started under the name of Upton Machine Company. The company received its first big order for 100 washing machines from Federal Electric. However, a problem arose when there was a failure in gear transmission in all the machines. The company, however, replaced the faulty components with new cut-steel gear. Federal Electric doubled its purchase to 200 washing machines after being pleased with the startup company’s ethical business practices. They remained Upton’s customer for three years till they started producing their own washing machines. In 1916, Upton got another major customer, Sears Roebuck & Co. Sears sold two varieties of Upton’s washing machines under the brand name ‘Allen’. Soon Sears appointed the Upton company as its sole supplier of washing machines. Upton later started marketing its washing machines under its own brand name. In 1929, the company merged with the Nineteen Hundred Washer Company of New York and together formed Nineteen Hundred Corporation. 

Despite the 1930s Great Depression, the corporation made investments in innovation and expanded into foreign markets. In 1947, the company debuted an automatic spinner-style washer that Sears sold under the “Kenmore” name. Later the company began selling it under the “Whirlpool” brand. In 1949 the company’s name was changed to Whirpool Corporation to help people recognize the company’s distinctive brand.

Whirlpool’s Entry Into India

In the late 1980s, Whirlpool Corporation debuted in the Indian market as a part of its goal of worldwide expansion. It constructed its first production plant in Puducherry, producing washing machines, in a joint partnership with the TVS Group. Whirlpool entered the refrigerator market when it bought Kelvinator India Limited in 1995. In the same year, the company bought significant stakes in the TVS joint venture. In 1996, the TVS and Kelvinator combined to become Whirlpool of India Limited. This increased the company’s product line in India to include air conditioners, microwave ovens, refrigerators and washing machines. With its main office in Gurgaon, Whirlpool India also has production plants in Pune, Puducherry, and Faridabad.

Founders – Louis Upton, Frederick, and Emory Upton

In 1908, the founder of Whirlpool Corporation, Louis Upton, invested in a company manufacturing household equipment. However, the business failed, and Upton, in return for his investment in the company, acquired the company’s patent on a manual washing machine. With the idea of adding an electric motor to this washing machine, he approached his uncle Emory Upton, an owner of the machine shop. With funding of $5000 from Lowell Bassford, the duo began the production of electric washing machines, which led to the establishment of Upton Machine Company in 1911. Later Louis’s younger brother Frederick also joined this company. 

CEO – Marc Bitzer

In 2017, Marc Bitzer was named the CEO of Whirlpool Corporation. Later in 2019, he was also elected as the Chairman of the Board. He has been associated with Whirlpool since 1999 when he joined Whirlpool Europe as its vice-president. He has completed his MBA and Doctorate from the St. Gallen Graduate School of Business, Economics, and Law in Switzerland.

Whirlpool Corporation continues to be a popular choice in home electronics worldwide. 

Palm Inc

Palm Inc – Jeff Hawkins’ Tech Venture Whose Operations Revived Recently Through A Shelf Company. 

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Founded in 1992, the Palm brand is associated with manufacturing personal digital assistants (PDAs). The company became famous after designing PalmPilot, the first successfully marketed PDA in the world. Since its founding, the company has been through several mergers and acquisitions. For a period of time, the Palm brand almost evaporated from the tech industry but then in 2014 the operations again started after an acquisition. Palm Inc is also known for developing the Treo 600, one of the first smartphones, and several versions of Palm OS. HP acquired Palm in 2010 but after a year decided to discontinue the Palm brand. Again in 2014, HP sold the Palm trademark to TCL Corporation and the latter announced its plan to revive the brand. 

The Original Palm Brand

In 1992, Jeff Hawkins incorporated the Palm brand and shortly brought Donna Dubinsky and Ed Colligan into the team. These three people are the main brains behind the invention of PalmPilot. When Palm was born, it wrote software for a consumer PDA, Zoomer. Casio was the manufacturer of this PDA and the Zoomer devices were distributed by Casio and GRiD. Palm mainly played the role of offering the PIM software. Though in a few years, Zoomer became a huge turndown, Palm stayed in business by selling software for HP devices. In 1995, Palm was acquired by U.S. Robotics Corp and after a couple of years, the latter was acquired by 3Com. So, Palm became a subsidiary of 3Com and the original founders left the company. 

Splitting Of The Company 

In 2000, Palm became an independent publicly-traded company as 3Com decided to take it public. Palm’s IPO was filed during the dot-com bubble so within a year the price of shares dropped and lost 90% of their value. In June 2001, Palm became the worst performing PDA manufacturer that was listed on the NASDAQ. After a year, Palm established a wholly-owned subsidiary, PalmSource for developing and licensing Palm OS. PalmSource and Palm became two different companies but the Palm trademark was held by a jointly owned holding company. By the end of 2003, the hardware division of the business merged with Handspring, and the business was renamed as palmOne Inc. 

After a couple of years, palmOne purchased PalmSource’s share in the common trademark for $30 million. Thus, the brand name of palmOne was changed to Palm Inc, bringing back the old brand name. In the same year, PalmSource was acquired by a company called ACCESS. The new Palm Inc started a partnership with Verizon and Microsoft in 2006 to release Palm Treo 700w. The company entered into a strategic partnership with Elevation Partners who purchased a 25% equity stake in Palm.  In 2008, the CEO of the company announced that Palm would no longer develop any new handheld PDAs. In early 2009, the share price increased to the WebOS hype but again dropped after a year. 

Palm Inc
Image source: pi.tedcdn.com

Acquisition By HP

In April 2010, HP announced that it would be purchasing Palm for $1.2 billion and the deal was completed two months later. After a year, HP unfolded a new line of WebOS products but they were not under the brand name Palm. In 2011, HP also decided to discontinue the use of the Palm brand and after a few months ended the production of all Palm and WebOS services. After this decision, many Palm staff members started leaving HP. In 2014, the Palm brand name resurfaced again as HP sold the trademark to a shelf company, a regional president of TCL Corporation. In 2015, TCL confirmed the acquisition of the Palm brand and that Palm would be recreated by a team in Silicon Valley.

About Jeff Hawkins 

Jeff Hawkins is the founder of both Palm Inc and Handspring. He studied electrical engineering at Cornell University and started working for GRiD Systems in 1982. After founding Palm and Handspring, Jeff co-founded Numenta in 2005 along with Dubinsky and Dileep George. Jeff has also made contributions in the field of neuroscience and founded Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience in 2002. 

Sanyo Electric

Sanyo Electric – Story of a Japanese Company Which has Become a Subsidiary of Panasonic.

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The foundation story of Sanyo Electric dates back to the late 1940s when Toshio Lue started his entrepreneurial journey. Sanyo Electric was officially launched in 1949 and its headquarters were based in Moriguchi, Osaka, Japan. In 2009, the company became a subsidiary of Panasonic when the latter acquired a 50.2 percent stake in Sanyo. Currently, the company operates under Panasonic and it is flourishing in the electronics industry. Some of the main products sold by the company are dry batteries, cellular phones, and consumer electronics. When the company was independent it had more than 230 subsidiaries and was a member of Fortune Global 500.

Origin of Sanyo Electric

Toshio Lue, before founding Sanyo Electric, was an employee at Matsushita (now Panasonic Corporation). He was the brother-in-law of the founder of Matsushita and he started building his business in an unused company plant lent to him. He started working for his start-up in 1947 and finally incorporated it after two years. In 1952, Sanyo Electric made the first plastic radio of Japan, and then in 1954 rolled out the nation’s first pulsator type washing machine. Being the first company to launch new electric appliances in the nation got Sanyo on the radar.

From the early 1970s, the company eventually planned to expand overseas and entered the American market. The demand for Sanyo’s products increased in the North American market when it started selling a vast range of consumer electronics like car stereos and home audio equipment. Sanyo started marketing extensively through television-based advertising. The expansion of Sanyo in the American market was possible because of Howard Ladd who became Executive Vice President and COO of the company in 1969.

Sanyo Electric
Image source: wikimedia.org

Expansion of Business

Under the leadership of Ladd, Sanyo didn’t just expand geographically but also started acquiring many companies and bringing more diversity. In 1977, Sanyo Electric decided to buy Fisher Electronics and completed the acquisition in the same year. Fisher became a subsidiary of Sanyo Electric and also turned into a million-dollar company in the sphere of consumer electronics. After the merger of Fisher Corporation of Sanyo, Ladd was made the CEO of the company and he remained the same till 1987.

In 1976, the company bought the television business of Whirlpool Corporation to make its presence more vivid in North America. But before that, the company suffered a bit of damage in the video sector. This happened because the company’s decision to use Sony’s Betamax VCR format didn’t turn out to be much profitable. Sanyo also acquired Warwick Electronics in 1976 which was known for television manufacturing. In the 1980s, the company also started selling personal computers but it lacked compatibility and hence disappeared from the market very soon. A merger between Fisher and Sanyo’s US affiliate took place in 1986 which made the company much more efficient but at the same time, some of the key executives of the company including Ladd quit Sanyo.

Acquisitions of Sanyo

The company suffered tremendous losses when it was hit by the Chuetsu earthquake in 2004. After a year, financial results showed that the company suffered a loss of 205 billion yen due to the earthquake. This called for a restructuring plan for Sanyo but the profits made by the company were insignificant as compared to the massive loss. In 2006, the company announced that the losses continued which led to several lay-offs. Eventually, the mobile phone division of the company was acquired by Kyocera, a ceramics and electronics manufacturer. In November 2008, Panasonic and Sanyo started discussing the buy-out agreement and after a year, Panasonic successfully acquired a majority stake in Sanyo and made it one of its subsidiaries. In 2010, Panasonic acquired the remaining shares in the company and decided the brand name of Sanyo will be terminated. But today there are still some electronics where the brand name of Sanyo is valuable.

About the Founder

Toshio Lue, before becoming the founder of Sanyo Electric, worked at Matsushita Electric Work in a growth and development role. Prior to that, Lue served in the Japanese military but stepped down after Japan’s defeat in World War II. After he resigned from Matsushita, he founded Sanyo Electric and he named his firm Sanyo because it meant “three oceans” in Japan. And, Lue’s goal was to expand Sanyo across Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic Oceans.

Keysight Technologies

Keysight Technologies – The Spun-off Electronics Division of HP, Making Big in the Industry.

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Keysight Technologies can be cited as the spun-off company of Hewlett-Packard, as it was one of the electronic test and measurement divisions of the latter before Keysight could be called an independent company. First, Keysight was a division at HP and then was taken over by Agilent Technologies (another division of HP).

The company came into being in 2014 and has made its separate identity in the world of electronics. Keysight Technologies, after getting separated from Hewlett-Packard, continued to manufacture and supply the electronics test and measurement equipment and added software development to one of its specializations.

About the Company

Though Keysight is a seven years old company, still with the experience of being a part of two big names Hewlett-Packard and Agilent Technologies, it was able to make its mark in the industry quite smoothly. Today the company has its own several divisions, including PathWave Design and PathWave Test oscilloscopes, etc., and over 14000 people are working for the company. Other than America, Keysight Technologies is operational in countries like UK and Australia. As of 2019, the company made an annual revenue worth US$4.3 billion.

A Brief History Keysight Technologies

The founders of Hewlett-Packard, Dave Packard, and Bill Hewlett, who were also good friends from their graduation from Stanford University, founding HP from a garage in Palo Alto, California, in 1939, today known as the Silicon Valley. The two started the company after they discovered their passion for innovation while camping in the Colorado mountains.

If we look at the beginning of HP, it started as an oscillator and electronic measurement manufacturing company. As time went by, HP excelled in its field and also added many other divisions, like the manufacturing of computers and printers, to its business. In 1999, the company separated its test and measurement components business and the computer-printer manufacturing business. The former went under the control of Agilent Technologies, the Medical Products and Instrument Group formed by HP.

Keysight Technologies
Image Source: keysight.com

For about fifteen years, Agilent handled the operations of Keysight Technologies, but on November 1, 2014, Keysight officially became a separate electronic measurement company through the spinning off of Agilent Technologies. Since then, the company has only stepped towards success. It also made some major acquisitions in the past seven years, which include Anite PLC (2015), Electroservices Enterprises UK Ltd (2015), Ixia (2017), Thales Calibration Services (2018), Eggplant (2020), and Quantum Benchmark (2021).

Keysight Technologies has established its headquarter in Santa Rosa, California, U.S., and trades on the New York Stock Exchange as KEYS.

Products by Keysight Technologies

Keysight Technologies, being a part of HP in the past, have similar values attached to its work. The major fields Keysight is focussing today include 5G, automotive, Internet of Things, network security, etc. and manufactures software and hardware products for benchtop, modular, and field instruments. Oscilloscopes, in-circuit testers, logic analyzers, signal generators, vector network analyzers, atomic force microscopes (AFM), automated optical inspection, automated X-ray inspection (5DX), power supplies, tunable lasers, optical power meters, wavelength-meters, optical modulation analyzers, etc. are the major products manufactured and shipped by Keysight Technologies.

The CEO: Ronald S. Nersesian

Ronald S. Nersesian is the president and the CEO of Keysight Technologies. Nersesian has got a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Lehigh University and has completed an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business.

Nersesian started his career with Computer Sciences Corporation as a systems engineer for satellite communications systems in 1982. After working for two years at the company, he joined Hewlett-Packard in 1984 and continued to work at the company till 1996, when he joined LeCroy Corporation. In 2002 Nersesian joined Agilent Technologies as the vice president and general manager of the Design Validation Division of the company. Till 2014, he managed various roles at Agilent Technologies, like the executive vice president and COO of the company. In 2014, Nersesian was appointed as the chairman, president, and CEO of Keysight Technologies.