Harman Professional Solutions, manufacturer of professional audio, video, lighting, and control systems, which was acquired by Samsung in 2016, announced it has been in the process of a consolidation.
“To be clear, the changes we announced yesterday are the culmination of a transformation that the Professional Solutions Division has been undergoing for the last two years to better serve our customers, increase our competitiveness, and accelerate new product innovations,” said David Glaubke, director of public relations, Harman Professional Solutions. “We are now consolidating certain locations acquired through acquisitions over the years to leverage the R&D, engineering, design and manufacturing operations of our other divisions and speed up our time to market.”
As the consolidation has been unfolding, some employees have already relocated within Harman Pro to locations such as the AMX by Harman headquarters in Richardson, TX. Other positions will result in a layoff.
“The changes we announced yesterday will impact 650 positions in the U.S. and Europe and will result in several facility closures over the next nine months to a year, including Elkhart, Indiana, South Jordan, Utah and a few smaller offices throughout Europe that came to Harman through a number of acquisitions over the last 10 years,” he said.
Previous to Harman’s acquisition of AMX, several strategic acquisitions were made by AMX including Washington-based AutoPatch. Between 2006 and 2008 more than five acquisitions were made in the U.S. and Europe.
- Northridge, California, for Acoustics
- Richardson, Texas, for Electronics, DSP and Video & Control
- Aarhus, Denmark, for Lighting
- Providing an example of the refocus, Glaubke noted the Mac Viper lighting product. “A CoC for lighting will allow our lighting engineers to focus more on critical differentiating factors like light engines and optics, instead of also requiring them to develop motors, mechanical structure and other supporting elements. The job of converting these technologies into competitive products will be for our newly formed New Product Innovation (NPI) teams.”
- Investments will be redirected to IT tools and platforms, said Glaubke, “to ensure our sales teams, distributors and reps have the tools and support they need to easily transact business. In addition, we are investing in Experience Centers in the US, and Europe, on top of the two that are already in Asia, for Harman and our partners to engage customers and demonstrate our leading solutions.”
People and Customers First
Glaubke emphasized, “decisions like this, while necessary, are not easy to make. We have given our employees advance notification of the changes we will make over the next year to assist with the transition and will do our best to mitigate the impact to our employees and their families.”
In addition, “we also will ensure that the process is completely seamless for our customers,” he said.“We are very excited about the future of Harman Professional Solutions and believe that, with these changes, we are now aligned and structured to serve our customers better and to return to stronger profitable growth,” concluded Glaubke.
