Supplier Excellence Awards S
Expo. It’s very cool because many of those innovations find their way into products that go to market.” Sumner said the length of time it takes to bring certain technologies to market de- pends on the product and the technology. “Sometimes products with newly inte- grated technology can go to market rela- tively quickly, meaning within a year, or sometimes it can be years before it’s de- veloped enough to make sense to do it,” Sumner said, adding that Yamaha artists also have a large impact on product in- novation. “We lean on our artists because they’re obviously the top tier as far as un- derstanding the instruments goes. We get lots of great input from our artists, and we’re always working with them to try to improve instruments.” SUPERIOR QUALITY CONTROL Another aspect of Yamaha’s operations that Excellence voters called out was the brand’s rigorous QC process with one saying Yamaha products are “the easiest sale because they have the best quality control.” “We have a very stringent QC pro- cess, even at the beginning of the process when we’re designing products, to make sure that we’re designing quality in from the beginning,” Sumner said. “There are various gates we have to go through to make sure that by the time a product is released that, when it got to the factory, it was ready to be produced and can con- tinue to be produced consistently with quality. Then we QC a huge percentage of the product that comes off of a line, as well. Quality control is really built into our DNA. Even if we have a small issue, one that a lot of customers might not even notice, we will stop production and make a fix before it goes to the marketplace. So, quality is definitely something that’s built into the whole company.” Heading into 2025, Sumner said he and the Yamaha team are looking forward to a “normal” year. “We’re excited for 2025,” he said. “A lot of the music market over the last five years has been insane. The pandemic shut down a lot of things, and then a lot of things took off and then there were supply issues and then inventory short- ages and then, as an industry, we were over inventory. So, we hope 2025 will get us back to normalcy from a market standpoint.” MI
CONSISTENT INNOVATORS With a product range that spans the scope of the industry, Yamaha continues to lead the pack in product innovation and quality control. — By Katie Kailus Yamaha’s Tom Sumner
D uring our 2024 Excellence Awards voting, Yamaha received the most votes of any supplier. Retailers rec- ognized the brand for a wide range of rea- sons, from their customer service to their top-selling products. However, a large amount of voting retailers highlighted the brand’s constant innovation. “[They are] constantly innovating with technology that is emulated by everyone,” said one voting retailer, with another add- ing, “They have the most innovative prod- ucts and promotions.” While Yamaha’s propriety innovations, like its Disklavier and Silent Piano func- tions, have changed the industry land-
scape, it hasn’t been for the wow-factor. “Our innovation process comes from a musical standpoint, it’s not innova- tion for innovation sake or for ‘gee whiz’ sake,” said Tom Sumner, president of Ya- maha Corp. of America. “Besides Diskla- vier and Silent Piano is the Transacoustic guitar where you have effects built into an acoustic guitar. Our engineers and our R&D team is always focused on do- ing new and innovative things. We let the engineers go a bit crazy and do whatever they want to do and then once a year in October they get to show it off to all the other engineers at a festival at our head- quarters in Japan called the Technology
50 I MUSIC INC. I DECEMBER 2024
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