Company Profile
Company Overview
Johnson Controls is a growth company. And not just because we've posted increased sales for over 59 consecutive years. We also do all we can to give people the chance to grow. Our employees enjoy working at a place that offers great advancement opportunities, training, benefits and more. You'll be challenged to innovate, encouraged to apply your knowledge and well-rewarded for results.
Johnson Controls is a global leader in interior experience, building efficiency and power solutions. The company provides innovative automotive interiors that help make driving more comfortable, safe and enjoyable. For buildings, it offers products and services that optimize energy use and improve comfort and security. Johnson Controls also provides batteries for automobiles and hybrid electric vehicles, along with systems engineering and service expertise.
EOE/AA Employer
Company History
MORE THAN
A CENTURY
OF EXCEEDING
CUSTOMER
EXPECTATIONS
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JOHNSON CONTROLS
A History of Exceeding Expectations
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Professor Johnson fostered many of the principles that have guided the company for over a century, including a focus on customer satisfaction, unquestioned integrity and a dedication to deliver on its promises.
It started with innovation.
In 1883, Warren S. Johnson, a professor at the State Normal School in Whitewater, Wisconsin, received a patent for the first electric room thermostat. His invention launched the building control industry and was the impetus for a new company.
Johnson and a group of Milwaukee investors incorporated the Johnson Electric Service Company in 1885 to manufacture, install and service automatic temperature regulation systems for buildings. The company was renamed Johnson Controls in 1974.
Between 1885 and 1911, Professor Johnson delved into many other areas, including electric storage batteries, steam and gas powered automobiles, huge pneumatic tower clocks and wireless telegraph communication. But at his death in 1911, the company decided to focus solely on its temperature control business for nonresidential buildings.
Johnson Controls continued to develop innovative new control technologies to help customers better manage their increasingly larger and more complex buildings. By the 1950s, for example, it was common for a large building to have hundreds of thermostats, valves, dampers and other temperature control devices installed throughout the facility, all of which had to be individually checked several times a day. To improve the efficiency of building operations staff, Johnson Controls introduced its Pneumatic Control Center, for the first time enabling a building operator to monitor and operate all the temperature control devices in a facility from a single, central site.
Key temperatures are supervised, checked, recorded and changed from a pneumatic control center.
The company that founded the controls industry has remained its technological leader. In 1972, it built the industry's first mini-computer dedicated to building control-the JC80. In the 1980s, Johnson Controls adopted digital control technology with its JC85, which gave customers faster and more precise control of building systems. In the 1990s, the company pioneered open communication protocols, which allows control devices from various manufacturers to share data directly for the first time. Today, its Metasys® Facilities Management System is reducing energy costs and improving indoor comfort in thousands of buildings around the world.
Service of facilities management systems has long been a staple of the company's offerings. Since the mid-1980s, it has expanded its scope to cover mechanical and electrical equipment to help customers reduce the number of service suppliers they need. The company created Integrated Facilities Management (IFM) to give customers a single source for operations and maintenance of all building systems and functions, and to ensure maximum building efficiency and reliability. Johnson Controls now provides full-time, on-site IFM staff for more than 600 million square feet of building space around the world, including IBM's facilities in 20 countries, and U.S. Government facilities in Cape Canaveral.
In 1978, Johnson Controls acquired Globe-Union, a Wisconsin-based manufacturer of automotive batteries for both the replacement and original equipment markets. Today, Johnson Controls is the largest producer of private-label lead-acid automotive batteries in North America, and is spreading its leadership to Asia and South America. The company also makes batteries for emergency power back-up and telecommunication applications.
Johnson Controls entered the automotive seating and plastics machinery industries in 1985 with the acquisition of Michigan-based Hoover Universal, Inc. At the time, the seating business primarily manufactured individual components, like frames, tracks or cushions, according to the automakers' specifications.
Globe-Union automotive
batteries built a reputation for reliability that still exists today
Today the company has become the world's largest manufacturer of complete seats, with manufacturing plants on five continents. Our just-in-time plants are located near customers' vehicle assembly plants. Seats are assembled, loaded on a truck, in a sequence that matches the cars coming down the assembly line, and delivered to the customer all in as little as 90 minutes.
Hoover started making components for automotive seats in the mid-1960s. Over the last decade, Johnson Controls has also developed comprehensive research, development, design, engineering and testing capabilities. This broad expertise is giving automakers and consumers seat systems with improved comfort, safety and technology.
Responding to its customers' requests, Johnson Controls expanded its presence within cars and light trucks in the early 1990s by offering interior components such as headliners and door trim. It significantly strengthened its position as a worldwide leader in interior systems through the 1996 acquisition of Prince Automotive. Prince is known for its innovation, from the first lighted vanity mirror in 1972 to the integration of electronics into interior systems. Johnson Controls currently provides all aspects of a complete interior, including overhead systems, floor consoles, door systems, instrument panels and seat systems.
In both its automotive and controls businesses, Johnson Controls remains committed to exceeding the increasing expectations of its customers. This commitment has enabled it to succeed for more than a century, and provides it with exciting prospects for the future.