Honeywell on Monday announced that it will acquire Hand Held Products Inc., adding a line of mobile communication and data collection products to its wireless portfolio and vaulting Honeywell, an industrial automation company, into new competitive territory.
The $390 million deal with privately held Hand Held is the latest in a string of acquisitions Honeywell has made this year that span its measurement and control, aerospace and defense, and security businesses. The acquisition is expected to close by the end of the year, pending regulatory approval, after which the company will become part of Honeywell's Security Group, which operates under the Automation and Control Solutions (ACS) business.
Hand Held Products manufactures bar code scanners and rugged mobile computers typically used in asset-tracking, logistics execution, and supply chain management. The company has a foothold in key vertical industries, such as retail, healthcare, utilities, and transportation. Honeywell officials say the Hand Held acquisition will complement and strengthen Honeywell's OneWireless initiative, a sensor-based mesh networking technology developed by Honeywell Process Solutions.
"We see a lot of opportunity to connect Hand Held with our customers in industrial, buildings, and security, and let them work through what the new products will look like," said Dan Sheflin, CTO at Honeywell ACS, in an interview with Managing Automation.