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Harman Professional Restructures, Lays Off 650 Employees

Following reports that Harman Professional has laid off 650 employees, Lighting&Sound America contacted the company for a comment.

David Glaubke, director, public relations for Haman, responded with the following statement:

"The changes we announced this week 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. 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. We also are investing in a stronger IT infrastructure, supply chain, and software-driven NPIs that will improve high-demand product availability and processes and resources for our customers, sales teams, and distributors.

"The changes we announced will impact 650 positions in the US and Europe (out of 3,700 Harman Pro employees worldwide) 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.

"Following these transitions, we will enter a rebuilding mode, forming three 'Centers of Competency:'

* Northridge, California, for acoustics;
* Richardson, Texas, for electronics, DSP, and video & control; and
* Aarhus, Denmark, for lighting.

"To provide an example of this refocus, consider a Mac Viper lighting product. A Center of Competency 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.

"We will also redirect our investments to IT tools and platforms, 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.

"HARMAN International has undergone similar changes in its other divisions over the years, shifting from hardware to software-centric businesses in lifestyle audio and connected car. Anticipating emerging megatrends and market changes, we evolved to stay competitive, vigorously pursuing cost leadership and investments to drive collaboration and innovation. Those businesses are now thriving. In fact, HARMAN overall is expanding in the US, adding 1,500 high-skilled jobs over the last five years, particularly in software development, design, and engineering, and has continued to invest in R&D and technologies that serve our customers in the automotive, consumer, and enterprise markets.

"Still, I want to emphasize that 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. Importantly, we also will ensure that the process is completely seamless for our customers.

"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."

WWWpro.harman.com/

https://pro.harman.com/


(19 September 2017)

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