By Bill Lydon, Editor
In January, I attended the opening ceremony for Eaton’s new building in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin and learned more about their R&D organization. The new building replaced their older building in the city of Milwaukee. The new 105,000-square-foot Menomonee Falls building was designed with the purpose of constructing an efficient and convenient building for employees. Eaton is pursuing a LEED Silver certification for the new building. The building includes an EMC facility, industrialization lab, product integrity center, model shop with 3D printer, tool room, reliability lab, shock and vibration lab, dyne lab, HALT (highly accelerated lifecycle testing) lab, and solar lab.
The grand opening featured a ribbon cutting ceremony with Sandy Cutler, Eaton Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Cutler began his career with Cutler-Hammer in 1975 as a financial analyst. After Eaton acquired Cutler-Hammer in 1979, Cutler became a division controller. He held various positions before becoming Eaton’s President and CEO in 1995. Cutler assumed his current position in August 2000.
In January of 1994, Eaton merged Westinghouse into its Cutler-Hammer division which became one of the biggest acquisitions in the electric industry's history. Throughout the 1990s, Eaton made 50 acquisitions while divesting itself of 48 less profitable divisions. The most recent $13 billion acquisition of Cooper Power is the largest in Eaton’s 101-year history. The acquisition added a range of products including utility power distribution, smart grid, lighting, lighting controls, wiring devices, and safety solutions.
When you combine the results of Eaton and Cooper for the four quarters ending September 30, 2012, Eaton Corporation plc had pro forma revenues of $21.8 billion and EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) of $3.3 billion.
Eaton Research
At the opening ceremony, I had the opportunity to meet Christopher J. Roche, Vice President of Innovation Center and Corporate Technology at Eaton. Roche’s responsibilities include overseeing 138 technologists in eight Eaton Innovation Centers globally, including four in the U.S., one in India, two in China, and one in the Czech Republic.
They are all co-located with businesses and engineering operations and have relationships with a number of universities, exploring new ideas for electrical, industrial control, hydraulics, and aerospace businesses.
Roche described the focus of these groups as being to “monetize valuable novelty.” Roche noted, “A small percentage of what we do might be adjacent or transformational technologies.” Based on our conversation, I interpret this as applied research rather than fundamental research. Roche described how they work closely with the business groups to generate ideas based on future trends and solving customer challenges. They also work with the business groups to help them develop their technology roadmaps for the future and this helps his group determine areas to explore.
This includes quarterly technology reviews with each group to understand strategic directions of the business groups.
Roche described their “Technology Discovery” process to determine a technology’s position in the technology life cycle - mature, transformative, or disruptive - and how it might fit into their plans. Based on this, they select technologies to further apply to product designs and determine feasibility for future products.
They have four technology platforms groups: power systems architecture, materials fluids & chemistry, advanced mechanical systems, and controls systems & solutions. He emphasized that innovation is a collaborative process, “not sitting at a desk in a vacuum.” The free flow of information is important. The overall goal is to create world class products.
Thoughts & Observations
Having spent time doing business in the old Eaton Milwaukee building, I can attest that this new facility has huge advantages as a work environment.
By attending this opening ceremony, I gained a better understanding of Eaton as a company and their commitment to developing products that meet world needs. The company has a very rational approach to applied research and development.
It will be interesting to watch how the organization changes with the integration of Cooper.