On the strategic front, we accomplished a number of items in fiscal 2016. We continued to expand our product portfolio of innovative and energy-efficient lighting and building management solutions. As a result, we grew net sales that meaningfully exceeded the growth rate of our addressable market. We continued with investments to enhance our production, distribution, and customer service and support capabilities, and further accelerated the deployment of our lean business processes, which improved our on-time delivery and company-wide productivity. We completed four acquisitions during fiscal 2016. The acquisition of Juno Lighting Group, a leading provider of downlighting and track lighting luminaires, enhanced and broadened our portfolio of lighting solutions for both residential and commercial applications.
We believe the combination of our dynamic businesses and strong leadership teams provides growth opportunities with key customer sets and benefits our primary sales channel partners in their respective markets. Additionally, we continued to execute our tiered solutions strategy with the acquisitions of Distech Controls, GeoMetri, and DGLogik, all in an effort to capitalize on the evolving and growing market for intelligent networked systems that collect and exchange data to increase efficiency as well as provide a host of other economic benefits resulting from data analytics. These acquisitions are part of the Company’s strategy to offer a single digital ecosystem that will allow for the true end-to-end optimization of all aspects of a building, including a quality visual environment, seamless operation, energy efficiency, operational cost reductions, and increased digital functionality, as well as outdoor applications. The transition to solid-state lighting provides the opportunity to expand our addressable market because lighting now provides an ideal platform for enabling the “Internet of Things” (IoT), which supports the advancement of smart cities and the smart grid.
This is an extraordinary time to be in the lighting and building management industries, particularly for a company of the caliber of Acuity Brands. Rapid advancements in technology, along with the need for greater energy efficiency, changes in public policy, and demand for environmental sustainability, continue to drive profound changes in our industry, creating an exciting opportunity. Acuity Brands is capitalizing on these profound changes to provide lighting and building management solutions that are efficient, elegant, and sophisticated, while at the same time simple to install, maintain, and use. We are at the forefront of transforming the lighting and building management industries. Our experience, knowledge, and skill as lighting experts allow us to deliver superior lighting solutions for virtually any application, a promise best captured in our tag line: "Expanding the Boundaries of Lighting™."
Our Future: Excellence, Innovation, Growth
As we enter 2017, our mission is to continue to build on our rich legacy of excellence, innovation, and growth to provide great returns for our shareholders, superior value for our customers, and growth opportunities for our associates. Our passion and intense focus continue to be centered on creating lighting and building management solutions that deliver superior quality, energy efficiency, and performance. We know that superior quality of light enhances how we live and interact, whether it is increasing students’ learning ability in schools, improving worker productivity and comfort in offices and industrial facilities, enhancing the shopping experience in retail establishments, or accelerating patient healing in hospitals. The possibilities of what can be achieved by the use of intelligent lighting solutions are still being explored. Our associates are rapidly exploiting new technologies and aggressively expanding our industry-leading portfolio by developing intelligent lighting and building management solutions that represent significant advancements over traditional technologies and easily network with other systems, improving energy efficiency, health & safety, and productivity.
As the market leader in North America, we believe our deep expertise in technology, optics and thermal management, our understanding of the art and science of lighting, and our ability to provide tailored lighting and building management solutions for numerous applications have positioned the company to excel. Our key strategies and tactical focus have remained consistent over the last few years. We expect to continue to execute our profitable growth strategy by focusing on the three mission-critical areas of operational excellence that we refer to as the 3 Cs:
