Honeywell Bull Inc is pulling its large systems manufacturing out of the Phoenix, Arizona factory that it acquired way back in 1970 from General Electric, and is transferring the work to its small systems plant in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The move, occasioned in part by the fact that the largest Honeywell Bull mainframes now all come from NEC Corp in Japan, marks the end of an era, and is part of a major restructuring and plant consolidation in its US operations that will lead to the loss of 1,600 US jobs over the next 12 months. The company hopes to eliminate many of the redundant or non-essential positions by attrition and voluntary early retirement programmes before resorting to lay-offs. In Massachusetts it will also consolidate several offices into a new facility to be constructed at its Billerica base.
