650 LAYOFFS AT HARMAN

15 September 2017

Not long after its $8b acquisition by Samsung, Harman has announced 650 job cuts across its pro audio, video, lighting, and control system brands over the next nine to 12 months. Brands affected by the cuts include AKG, AMX, BSS, Crown, dbx, DigiTech, JBL, IDX, Martin, Soundcraft, Studer, and SVSI.

The layoffs are accompanied by a number of facility enclosures in Elkhart, South Jordan, Indiana, Utah, and a few smaller offices throughout Europe. In the wake of these closures, Harman intends to consolidate its R&D efforts into three ‘Centres of Competency,’ with acoustics to be headquartered in Harman’s existing facilities in Northridge, CA, electronics, DSP, and video and control tackled in AMX’s hometown of Richardson, TX, and lighting centred in Martin Professional’s longtime base, Aarhus, Denmark.

In an official statement, David Glaubke, the director of Public Relations, Professional Solutions at Harman International said; “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.”

“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,” Glaubke said. “Importantly, we also will ensure that the process is completely seamless for our customers.”

Harman: pro.harman.com