The company plans to transition its production from traditional lathing practices to center less grinders with a complete transition by the end of 2012. Pro-Mark has embraced the guiding principles of lean manufacturing, a production practice that is centered on preserving value with less work.

Lean production considers the expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination.

By implementing stringent machine maintenance routines, enhanced quality standards at the wood source and dowel sorting processes at the mill and factory, ProMark has already delivered improvements in quality and consistency under D'Addario's ownership.

Rick Drumm (yes, that's his real name), once a teen-age drumming contest winner and current president of D'Addario & Company, comments:

"The changeover to a lean culture, coupled with D'Addario's extensive engineering, marketing, and distribution resources, has afforded Pro-Mark remarkable new growth opportunities. In addition, Pro-Mark's customer service is now up to D'Addario standards. If a customer places an order in by 4:00 pm, it will ship the same day. This is one more example of our dedication to an extremely high level of customer satisfaction."