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Turbosound Expands Manufacturing Capacity
Turbosound has announced the appointment of Mike Viggers to the post of manufacturing director. This coincides with the introduction of a new hi-tech production facility, which is focusing on Turbosound's TXD products and its new TCS Compact contractor loudspeakers. Turbosound's new production line is delivering a significant increase in manufacturing capacity, with its introduction in direct response to the growth in demand across its extensive product ranges, and to the rapid success of its flagship Aspect design.
With its unique Polyhorn technology, Aspect systems featured on many tours and major festivals during 2005 - including Coachella (USA), Glastonbury and Jersey Live (UK), Roskilde and Skanderborg (Denmark) - and early adopters are already placing orders for additional stock. This increase in market demand, and its consequential effect on manufacturing capacity, accelerated the company's decision to install the new production line, complete with automated anechoic test facilities. Located in a recently acquired area of Turbosound's Sussex factory, the new line is enabling the company to achieve faster production lead times, with the flexibility to manufacture any of its smaller products.
Mike Viggers' appointment follows Turbosound's recent expansion of its sales team, and he joins Turbosound as manufacturing director following a 25-year career with Parker Pens, latterly as European manufacturing director. He explained: “Writing instruments and loudspeakers may not appear to have much in common, but they are both precision-engineered products in their own right, and the same principles of quality assurance and a customer-focused attitude apply. In my view, customer service is the most important factor in a truly successful business, and has to be maintained at the highest level to ensure the security of a brand's reputation and market position.
“Turbosound is a well-respected and established brand, and the current growth in demand had to be translated into faster manufacturing cycles, hence the introduction of the new line. This is giving us increased flexibility and is improving our production capacity by some 25%. The critical factor is that it enables us to provide exactly what our customers want and when they need it. This flexibility is already having a positive impact on sales, which are demonstrating a steady increase, attributable to our ability to achieve faster turnaround times.
“Turbosound is all about good people, good product and a good brand. And with the continuing increase in sales, we are looking to expand many areas of our business, especially our engineering resources, to help develop the innovative products for which we are renowned. We are investing heavily to ensure we can offer the best quality products, service and delivery, and we have every reason to be extremely optimistic about the future.”
The design of Turbosound's new production line was co-ordinated by Jon Constable, the company's mechanical engineer, and is based on a palletised roller-conveyor system, with four workstations - each equipped with dedicated air tools and adjacent component storage. Throughput of the new line is also being enhanced by its efficient automated test facilities, which have been designed by acoustics engineer Andy Pardoe, Turbosound's senior development engineer. The automated line-test facility checks multiple parameters within a cycle time of less than two seconds, and plays an essential role within the range of multiple listening tests that each loudspeaker undergoes during production.
As part of its traceability policy, Turbosound maintains a log of every test of every loudspeaker, with the accumulated data enabling longer-term trends to be monitored across frequency response, component rejects, and driver manufacturing consistency. Each product's test log, serial number and barcode form a unique set of data. At any point in the future, simply reading a product's barcode will display its test performance and component serial number, allowing any field problems to be referenced back to the point of manufacture, to enhance long-term quality assurance.
11th January 2006
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