MERIDIAN, MS — Peavey Electronics Corporation has begun a company-wide “lean” initiative intended to maximize efficiency among its 33 facilities and strengthen the organization’s position in the global marketplace, according to Courtland Gray, COO.
“By embracing ‘lean’ practices, we can better understand the flow of production from plant to plant and come up with more efficient ways of doing business,” he said. “Our goals are to apply skills efficiently, deploy freed resources where needed, and ultimately become more competitive. Peavey is committing to making a significant upward stride in performance in a short period of time, and that will benefit our customers, employees and community.”
Peavey’s “lean” program is part of a multi-million dollar reinvestment that Peavey Electronics has made in its infrastructure since 2008, including a new ERP computer network to streamline the flow of information, enhance communication and unify its global affiliates. With this next phase, Gray said that Peavey employees hold the key to the company’s future.
“Our ‘lean’ strategy depends on an internal team that will determine how to alter the company’s workflow and processes,” he said. “The team is a stratified representation of the Peavey employee family, including manufacturing line workers, plant managers and product engineers. It’s important that our plan is shaped by the people who will ensure its success.”
Peavey’s past achievements in manufacturing innovation include its adoption of CNC technology for its musical instruments in the 1970s.
Michael Harbaugh, operations manager of the manufacturing extension partnership of Mississippi, a division of the Mississippi Technology Alliance, is working with Peavey on a “lean” business model.
“Today’s globally competitive environment demands that companies use every resource to its full potential,” he said. “In traditional approaches to business, only 5 percent of the resources expended on a daily basis result in ‘value-added’ activities, or those that people are willing to pay for. The more we convert that waste into value-added activities, the more profitable, competitive and faster the company becomes. Customers want things faster, cheaper and easier, and ‘lean’ is the only known sustainable mechanism that makes companies operate faster and more efficiently.
“Manufacturing is the heart and soul of an economy,” Harbaugh added. “The stronger we can make U.S. manufacturing, the stronger and more secure we will be. ‘Lean’ secures the manufacturing base of America, and by adopting this transformational model, Peavey is helping lead the way.”
For more information, please visit www.peavey.com.
