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Building a Career with Relationships, Collaboration and Experience
By Brian Schultz
Senior Director Global Operations
Last month David Tovissi talked about culture and how it impacts tenure and productivity. Continuing with this concept, as June marked my 38th year with HARMAN it is a timely occasion to reflect on the roles, responsibilities and experience that set the stage for my current role as Sr. Director Global Operations for the Luxury Audio Business Unit.
As some of you may already know, the HARMAN Luxury Audio Business Unit is guided by a team mentality we refer to as POWER. Each letter of the word POWER stands for something we believe in focusing our efforts towards. Today, I am authoring an article where I am focusing on the “R” in POWER which stands for Relationships.
As mentioned in my Meet the Team article in August 2023, up until 1987, I was working at a wheelchair manufacturing company, responsible for meeting schedules, maintaining quality, and controlling costs within budget in the final assembly area. I was hired at HARMAN in June 1987 and one of my first contacts on my first day was one of our current Luxury Audio PMs (Tom Melville, who celebrated his 40-year anniversary two months ago) who gave me a tour of the facility.
From 1987 to 2001 I engaged in Project Management, both for the factory and then with what was then called the Consumer Group, responsible for product development and working with the engineering teams, support personnel at the factory and marketing. In 2001 I performed a similar role in getting the HARMAN Mexico facility up and running, returning to the Consumer/Lifestyle group in 2007.
The year 2010 marked the expansion of HARMAN with the beginnings of our Shenzhen China office with its many engineering and operations support teams as well as expansion to using overseas suppliers. I continued my role of Project Manager and becoming part of the Luxury Audio organization and managing PMs within the group. In 2018, I became Director of Engineering for our Loudspeaker group. In 2023, I moved into my current role of Sr. Director, Global Operations, continuing having the five PMs of the LuxA group reporting to me while adding the LuxA Quality & Compliance person to my team. I am now working even more closely with our China Procurement, Supply Chain and Finance teams as well as the nine Sales Regions to solve forecasting & demand planning and excess material issues, as well as collaborating with suppliers on shortages and supporting any product end-of-life activities and any other operational needs of the Luxury Audio BU.
What does this mean for our dealers and customers? I have the unique ability to help focus personnel within the Luxury Audio group and HARMAN Lifestyle support organizations to push for new product development on time and on quality, and support the supply chain and sales regions to gather demand across the globe to ensure each region can have product to sell and to identify areas where inventory can be shared across the regions to meet immediate customer demand.
As you can see, my roles at HARMAN have prepared me to be able to understand all the various aspects needed to create and launch successful products and have them available for sale across the globe. As stated in the title, none of this could have happened without the collaboration and relationships formed with all that I have been fortunate to work with; and to all that have helped in my journey, I am entirely grateful.