Industrial manufacturing

David Cote

CEO, Honeywell    View profile

We’re planning on slow growth across the global economy. We should assume a slight recession in Europe, while the US should grow at a slow pace. China will grow slower but still at good pace, and I expect the same thing in India. The overall debt question, both in the US and in Europe, is creating this big market overhang, and it’s going to have to work its way through. Europe’s problems are the ones that we’re focusing on now, but right behind them are those in the US.

David Cote

CEO, Honeywell    View profile

[…] we tend to focus on in country hiring. For example, I want our China businesses run by local Chinese talent. We may not always have the talent to do that locally, in which case we will bring someone in from the outside. Promoting from within a country, though, shows everyone in the organisation that they can continue to grow and aspire to top jobs. Honeywell’s operations are big enough in any of our markets to allow our people to grow their careers for quite a while.

David Cote

CEO, Honeywell    View profile

Talent has always been a strategic issue for us, and I personally spend a great deal of time on it. For example, I review the performance of our top 200 people three times a year. In fact, either myself or Mark James, our human resources leader, personally interviews those individuals before they’re hired, even if we already know them.

Douglas R. Oberhelman

Chairman and CEO, Caterpillar Inc.    View profile

Those of us in business, no matter where we operate around the world, need strong economies and fiscal soundness.

Douglas R. Oberhelman

Chairman and CEO, Caterpillar Inc.    View profile

[...] we deeply believe we have to be in China to know that market and those competitors, in order to take them on at their own game. We learned that in the early 1960s when our predecessors went to Japan and successfully took on Komatsu, a very strong emerging competitor. That’s exactly what we’re going to do in China, where we’ve already established 15 plants with 9,000 employees. Our dealers there are strong. We’re building the same Caterpillar business model in China as we have everywhere else in the world, and I believe Chinese customers will respond to that over time.

Douglas R. Oberhelman

Chairman and CEO, Caterpillar Inc.    View profile

We have stepped up our global investment program over the last 18 months, particularly in emerging markets, including Thailand, China, India, Indonesia, and Brazil. We’re putting in new brick-and-mortar facilities and adding capacity in order to expand our ability to manufacture and assemble products in those markets. I firmly believe that with seven billion people on the planet wanting to live as we do in the US, they’re going to want infrastructure. Caterpillar makes infrastructure, so we have to be there.

Douglas R. Oberhelman

Chairman and CEO, Caterpillar Inc.    View profile

We went from $51 billion in sales in 2008 to $32 billion one year later. We rapidly shrank our cost structure to make money and preserve our credit rating, which was painful on our management team. But a couple of good things came out of that. One, we got through it, and, two, we trained an entire generation of new leaders how to manage in a trough.

Douglas R. Oberhelman

Chairman and CEO, Caterpillar Inc.    View profile

I talk with customers around the world, and without fail, within a few minutes they bring up the issue of environment sustainability, including issues such as managing fuel consumption, CO2 emissions, and oil footprint. We have a number of good ideas and initiatives in the sustainability arena.