Honeywell bullish on miniature sensors, eyes Tier 1 suppliers in India

With growing demand for testing solutions in the Indian automotive market, Honeywell says it is well placed to capitalise on the business opportunity.

Honeywell’s sensing and productivity solutions division looks after sensors with applications for aerospace, industrial and transportation, which includes off-road construction vehicles, tractors and vehicle testing. The company was an exhibitor at the Automotive Testing Expo in Chennai last month.   

Talking to Autocar Professional, Girish S Karhadkar, vertical sales manager, defence – aero, medical, test and measurement, sensing and productivity solutions, Honeywell Automation India, said: “We supply a lot of operator controls for tractors and off-road construction equipment. A number of our sensors are used in validation testing for indoor and outdoor conditions. For indoor testing, our solutions are used in component testing such as engines, transmissions and others. In reliability or endurance testing, there could be applications of load, pressure, torque and other parameters."

"These are fundamental quantities and to capture them, our sensors are used. For example in the testing of a seating system, load cells are used. In engine testing, parameters such as lube oil pressure, air intake pressure, and exhaust pressure have to be measured. For this, pressure transducers are used in the engine dynamometers,” said Karhadkar (pictured above)

With testing and validation process becoming more sophisticated over time, sensors are now reducing in size and weight. The company manufactures sensors which are used in various testing applications.

“We make load cells, pressure sensors, torque sensors, LVDTs, accelerometers, which are all widely used. We are one of the preferred suppliers to a lot of companies in India including manufacturers also. Vehicle testing is predominantly driven by the OEMs who put these sensors on their vehicles to test them. Outdoor testing demands miniature sensors because space and weight matters a lot while testing processes. We have sensors that can be fitted in the engine bay or on the underbelly of the car, on the chassis,” added Karhadkar.

Upcoming emission and safety norms are good news for companies like Honeywell. While this would drive the investments in automotive R&D, it would also give a fillip to the demand of more complex aggregates that are used in the testing domain.

Giving a suitable example, Karhadkar explained: “For airbag testing they will require miniaturised sensors to sit on the airbags to measure the burst pressure. To address the incoming norms, I estimate that there will be system level requirements.”

The company is focussing on the miniaturised sensors and other key products in its portfolio. OEMs, and Tier 1 suppliers of testing equipment such as AVL, Horiba, Dynaspede and others are potential customers of Honeywell in this domain.

The company, which has invested in setting up a production plant in China to manufacture load cells, has a well-established design centre in Bangalore where around 150 engineers work on the sensor business alone. According to Karhadkar, the simulation and customer support teams, which address the critical issues for customers, are also based in Bangalore.

The company is planning to work more with Tier 1 suppliers and OEMs in terms of understanding their expectations and limitations and supply tailor-made solutions.