Over the last five years we have implemented Toyota’s Lean manufacturing systems at D’Addario. Lean is a culture of continuous improvement that was perfected by the Toyota company and is utilized by hundreds of thousands of businesses around the world. It has helped us improve our quality, improve our customer service and control our manufacturing costs.
In fact the Lean transformation has been so effective in teaching us world class manufacturing principles that we have been able to apply the disciplines we have learned to every area of our business; from the harvesting of cane in France and Argentina for our Rico Reeds, to developing new products, to the assembly of Planet Waves Pro-Winders in New York. An example of the success of “Lean” at D’Addario is the fact that we have been able to re-shore 50% of our Planet Waves products that were previously being imported from Asia.
In our string production area we have made countless manufacturing improvements. You may not be aware, but D’Addario produces nearly 800,000 strings a day at our Farmingdale New York headquarters. We are proud that even though our volume exceeds our nearest competitor by a factor of two or three times, our quality control and manufacturing consistency has continued to improve and is the benchmark for the industry. We are also proud that all our strings, drumheads, reeds, drumsticks and many of our accessories are Made in the USA. In fact 95% of the products we design and produce are American made.
Recently I visited the Woodstock Luthiers Festival where 98% of the guitars on display were strung with D’Addario strings. When talking to each luthier they all told a common story. When they set out to build their guitars they use D’Addario strings exclusively, because of the quality of their sound and their consistency set after set. D’Addario strings are the reliable reference they use as they build and ultimately set up their instruments.
Part of the DNA of the D’Addario family and company is that “We are the most difficult people to please, not our customers ”. We also have a deep respect for our planet and try our best to minimize our impact on our environment.
In the late 1980’s we began to develop and pioneer the environmental packaging we use today. It was a major breakthrough as it eliminated the individual envelopes that were required to identify each of the six strings in a set. It created other issues in production that led to the creation of a conveyor system where operators coiling strings for each note in the set would drop their string on the conveyor as it kept indexing. The conveyor would then deliver complete six string sets to the end of the line where they were bagged in a corrosion barrier bag and then inserted in a recycled paper outer envelope. Two pieces of packaging replaced eight; a 75% reduction in packaging material being discarded.
This system eliminated the need to cut down tens of thousands of tress and also improved productivity. It also resulted in a significant price decrease in the early 1990’s and has helped us to hold future price increases on our string sets to a minimum.
It is our culture to respond to every single comment, question or suggestion we receive from our end users, in a timely and respectful manner. We also carefully monitor any quality concerns regarding our products and take them very, very seriously. After all it is our culture to maintain the reputation as the highest quality producer of music strings and accessories.
While we only receive a handful of complaints each week historically the most common complaint has been the occasional incomplete set. A user may open a package and find he is missing a string. On our packaging conveyors it was difficult for the person packaging the sets at the end of the line to identify if all six strings were present.
We tested sophisticated check weighing systems to flag incomplete or incorrect sets, but none could detect the many combinations of errors that could occur during the process. About two years ago, someone had the revelation that if we coiled the strings in pairs it would be much easier for the operators at the end of the lines to detect if they had a complete set. Visually it is easier to see three neatly coiled pairs of strings than six randomly mixed individually coiled strings.
We set up one line to package sets this way for over a year. Tens of thousands of sets were put into the market place and we found that this new system virtually eliminated the issue of incomplete sets.
While have seen a handful of complaints from customers in regards to the new coiling system, we trust that the reassurance that all 6 strings will be in the package when you need them will outweigh the negatives.
I would also like to point out that D’Addario offers a complete range of single strings that are neatly packaged in individual envelopes;
electric singles here &
acoustic singles here.
I hope the information above helps you understand the reasons why your favorite string sets are now coiled in pairs and not individually. If you have any questions on this topic or any other please direct them to customer.service@daddario.com or comment on this blog and we will for sure get back to you.
Thanks for listening.
Yours Truly,
Jim D’Addario
