Innovative GC Technology is Key to Agilent’s Success: Interview With Agilent President and CEO, Mike McMullen

In celebration of American Laboratory’s 50th anniversary as well as Agilent’s 50 years in the analytical sector (Figure 1), I had the opportunity to interview Mike McMullen, CEO and president of Agilent Technologies (Figure 2). More than 30 years ago, Mike joined Agilent’s predecessor, Hewlett-Packard, because he saw their products as making an obvious contribution to society. In his view, this is truer today than ever.

Figure 1 – A brief history of HP/Agilent’s revenue growth and technology milestones in life sciences, diagnostics, and applied chemical markets. Image used with permission of Agilent Technologies.
Figure 2 – Mike McMullen and Robert Stevenson reviewing major milestones in the evolution of Agilent.

RLS: How did you come to HP/Agilent?

MM: After graduating with a degree in economics and finance in 1984, I faced the choice of pursuing traditional employment in the financial sector or trying something else. It seemed that technology was the place where real things were happening, so I sought out leading technology firms. In the 1980s, Hewlett-Packard was clearly one of the top five technology companies. HP had an operation in Little Falls, DE, so I joined them. Initially, I worked as a financial analyst, but I quickly developed a keen interest in building business. Along the way, I also started to understand how it was that the HP business model was so successful, especially with so many seemingly disjointed business segments, including technology that ranged from chromatography to handheld calculators.

RLS: What did you find?

MM: HP had a culture that encouraged innovation based upon science and engineering. HP’s reputation for developing and applying technology attracted many of the best subject-matter experts. I noticed that individually they were working on projects within the silo of their chosen specialty, but I also noticed that the biggest commercial hits came from innovative crossover projects. The handheld calculator of the early 1970s was developed this way. And in the case of gas chromatography (GC), the technology quickly appeared in control panels, and later a line of digital integrators for chromatography. Next, we adopted technology from HP’s printing technology to enable printing digital integrators. Then, in my time, HP’s computer technology was incorporated into an even more sophisticated control of GC/MS and LC/MS. At HP the generalization was, if you had a technical problem, it was probable that there was an employee with a working knowledge of the topic. You just had to find them.

RLS: You said that you liked developing businesses. What was your first major assignment?

MM: After returning from my overseas assignment in our Asia field organization, I was assigned to help revitalize HP’s mass spec products, with emphasis on single- and triple-quadrupole GC/MS. Finnegan Instruments Corporation was growing nicely and our HP products were starting to become out-of-date. We had to change that, as we were a global market leader in GC. Our LC business was growing nicely, particularly due to the 1090 LC and 1100 Modular LC. But, there was competition, including Waters with their Micromass MS products for LC.

RLS: What next?

MM: In 1996 I was asked to spend six months in Japan to help HP/Yokogawa introduce an ICP/MS. Yokogawa was a partner with HP in other product segments, and a distributor of HP products and services. After five years, I was repatriated back to Little Falls, DE. My assignment was to develop and build HP/Agilent’s instrument business in Asia, particularly in China. Our timing was right, and today, Agilent’s business in Asia is exceptionally strong. And chromatography is one of Agilent’s strongest market positions.

RLS: Tell us about the first few years of chromatography after Agilent was split off from HP.

MM: Since I didn’t have a technical background, I started to study what the key elements were to HP’s success. I wanted to make sure that these were recognized and preserved in Agilent. This was especially important since a wave of consolidation was upon us with private equity firms camouflaged as instrument companies, growing by buying sales and paying for the purchase by cutting expenses, particularly in R&D.

My background is finance. I understand that cutting expenses, especially postacquisition, can improve earnings over the short term, but this will be at the expense of long-term innovation and true organic growth. Society is better served by having strong, innovative companies that are creating new products for new markets.

When I brief financial analysts about our business, I expect at times they may suggest that Agilent cut its R&D spending. I’ve heard it before, and there are plenty of opportunities for investments in firms that underfund R&D over the short term. However, the short term can extend into the long term.

As I have studied HP/Agilent over the years, I’ve seen that the “HP Culture” is the most important factor in our success. We focus on creating a workplace that encourages personal growth, innovation, and risk-taking. Thus, our employees have developed deep insight in their work, especially in technical areas. There is also some internal competition, which motivates our people to find innovative commercial outlets to their work product. And, it works! Our product development teams have years of company and product experience. As president, I see protecting the HP/Agilent culture as one of my top priorities.

RLS: Well, now that you have been president and CEO for over three years, what do you see as Agilent’s core competencies and business model?

MM: Let’s go back in time to the 1960s and before. HP was known as a source for instruments to measure electrical signals such as oscilloscopes, power supplies, oscillators, and frequency counters. They had earned a solid reputation for premium quality, including leading performance. The designers also sought to make the human interface qualify as intuitive and easy to use.

During the 1960s we then started to see instruments for chemical analysis appear. These included gas chromatographs, followed by liquid chromatographs, optical and mass spectrometers, etc.

HP saw an opportunity for synergistic growth, and bought F&M Instruments, which developed and sold gas chromatographs. Under the guidance of Mr. Lew Platt, HP applied their manufacturing expertise to chromatographs, which greatly improved ease of use and reliability. Then, at the end of the 1960s, HP acquired Hupe & Busch, which added liquid chromatography.

Lew Platt, then head of the Chemical Analysis Group, and later president of HP, was very interested in improving the utility of chromatographs. This led to the development of digital integrators, including printing versions, autosamplers, and fused-silica columns for capillary GC (Figure 3). A flood of application notes supported the adoption of GC by many labs.

Figure 3 – Fused-silica capillary column developed by HP/Agilent in 1978 for gas chromatography. Today, fused-silica capillaries have displaced packed columns for most GC applications.

When Mr. Platt became president of HP, Dieter Hoehn became president of the Chemical Analysis Group (CAG). Dieter was also very interested in improving the cost of ownership, throughput, and reliability of GC, LC, and MS. Our customers told us what they wanted to do, and our experienced engineers were incredibly adept at converting these desires into new products.

This brings up one other factor that emerged during the 1980s and continues today. Our product development teams have decades of experience with particular product segments. They have acquired experience with technology and applications that is invaluable in developing new products. For example, the Intuvo GC utilizes several new design concepts that reduce costs and size, while simultaneously improving reliability and ROI for our customers.

RLS: What was the impact of fused-silica capillary columns for GC?

MM: The impact was huge, for GC, and all separation science. At least 80% of the GC assays today use fused-silica capillary columns, or FSCC (Figure 3). These columns were developed at Agilent through cooperation between our electronics communications group, which was developing optical fibers to replace copper in long-range communications, and the CAG. Dr. Ray Dandeneau of the CAG saw the possibility of using fused-silica tubes for capillary columns, and it worked, but they fractured easily. So, he wanted to make them more robust. Engineers in the optical communications group at HP knew that coating fused-silica fibers with polymers such as polyimide could prevent surface cracking, which was responsible for fracturing. Ray tried it, and it worked. Today, FSCC are used routinely in a wide variety of GC applications ranging from environmental analysis to food testing to pharmaceutical product quality assurance.

RLS: How would you characterize the impact of computers on GC?

MM: This was a strong example of synergism that existed in HP. At the time, HP’s computer division was a market leader in personal computers. The CAG had open access to this technology and products, which gave the engineers access to the best available technology for use in CAG products. Plus, the cost was low, especially compared to outside chip developers. Indeed, some of the chips are used for sample manipulation rather than just electronics. This was a key advantage in the 1980s through 2005.

RLS: What do you keep in mind as you manage Agilent on a daily basis?

MM: To summarize, Agilent’s core competency in GC and LC includes:

  • A dedicated product development team with decades of experience in specific product segments. In fact, unplanned employee turnover is less than half that of the competition.
  • A key competency in GC with the ability to understand the needs of our customers and convert these to specifications and designs for next-generation products. This requires teamwork and people with deep subject-matter expertise in GC.
  • A corporate culture that encourages innovation and views failure as a learning experience.
  • A focus on continuing to make our products easy for our customers to use.
  • A focus on continuing to make our products as reliable as the best technology permits.
  • Communicating our success, and that of our customers, to all employees involved.

RLS: What do you see in the future?

MM: Agilent has many products that fit into a range of market segments. GC is typical in that it is a key enabling technology in fuels, pharmaceuticals, environmental, forensics, electronics, clinical diagnostics, and more. I expect that many of these segments will evolve into opportunities for application-specific analyzers using GC technology behind the panel.

Automation, reliability, and ease of use will all continue to improve. The Internet of Things will come, which should improve data quality and decision support. We plan to lead the state-of-the art as these develop.

Our global society will continue to expect that the products they buy are safe and efficacious, and available at a reasonable cost. And we take pride that Agilent supplies many of the tools that will enable other firms, and our customers, to respond to these needs.

Robert L. Stevenson, Ph.D., is Editor Emeritus, American Laboratory/Labcompare; e-mail: [email protected]