Acuity Brands 2020 Annual Report

PROCESS

“We’re creating new processes and boosting efficiencies to become even better partners to our customers.”

Tyler H. Moon, Senior Vice President & Chief Operating Officer

ABOUT TYLER

Over the last 13 years, Tyler has held several different senior positions in operations, product management, and sales, and as Acuity Brands’ new COO, he is using his knowledge of the Company to help us further drive our data-driven, customer-focused mindset within our supply chain operations.

During every crisis, there is an opportunity for those who can respond with resiliency, creativity, and flexibility. This year Acuity Brands faced tremendous challenges across our entire value chain, and as we adapted our operations to the realities of a global pandemic, we took advantage of this unique inflection point in our Company’s history. With our associates leading the way, we developed new workflows to make us an even more responsive, reliable partner to our customers. Moving forward, we will maintain this momentum while also setting new standards and upending old paradigms to build a long-term strategic advantage.

We are driving a digital transformation to become Better, Smarter, Faster. Creating a more responsive customer experience is one of our top priorities and we are transforming Acuity Brands into a more agile, customer-oriented company. Better, Smarter, Faster, which was spearheaded by cross-functional teams, created a foundation for collecting and analyzing customer feedback, strengthening our customer touchpoints, and identifying processes and tools to close the communication gap between product orders and delivery. We have met our challenges with resolve and imagination, and, as a result, we are building a strong foundation for achieving new levels of visibility, productivity, and responsiveness.

We are incorporating new digital technologies into our manufacturing and logistics to make us efficient. In our warehouse operations, we have begun to apply the asset tracking and analytics of our Atrius® indoor data platform to our forklift fleet to work more efficiently and safely. As our supply chain operations continue to produce more and more data, we will be able to achieve real-time, end-to-end transparency throughout our supply network.

While protecting our safety and health, we carried on as an essential business.

Back in March, during a time of global supply chain disruption, we demonstrated a strong commitment to continue supplying our lighting, lighting controls, and building management systems to hospitals, clinics, supermarkets, transportation facilities, and other critical end-users. To keep our physical operations running safely and at full capacity, while at the same time supporting our associates suddenly working virtually from home, we had to rapidly develop a series of health and safety protocols that could be implemented across a range of different environments.

To ensure our supply chain and distribution teams could keep working in close collaboration with our sales teams to deliver on our commitments, we empowered our facilities across the world to create a COVID-19 response team that could implement measures to comply with local regulations as well as Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines. In our three Monterrey, Mexico plants we were able to limit the potential for human cross exposure and control those environments so effectively that our safety protocols become a model for other companies operating within Mexico's northern border zone.

We are thankful for our associates who were working hard before the crisis and have continued to outperform expectations in these unprecedented times. During arguably the most challenging year in the Company’s history, many of our facilities have seen increases in productivity and product shipping speeds. This operational resilience – and the dedication it required – was made possible by the passion and collaboration of our people.

“Our digital transformation goes beyond data and applications. It's a transformation of people.”

LADARIUS AGEE
Lead Design Engineer

To solve one of our customers’ biggest challenges, we closed the gaps in our logistics ecosystem.

LaDarius’ areas of expertise include process improvement, design and implementation, procurement systems, and production optimization. This year he led a cross-functional team as part of the Better, Smarter, Faster initiative tasked with improving the customer experience.

I design products that go into harsh industrial spaces like warehouses and factories, and along with the rest of our Atlanta-area office associates, I have been working from home since March as part of a virtual engineering team. When Acuity Brands asked me to join the Better, Smarter, Faster team to help the Company drive its digital transformation, I was excited about the chance to solve some of our customers' biggest problems, as well as get to know people outside of engineering. Our cross-functional team cut across traditional silos and included associates from sourcing, marketing, sales, IT, customer solutions, and product management.

We focused on the customer, asking how and where we can improve the customer experience. We surveyed over 200 agents and distributors, and what we heard was customers wanted a way to accurately monitor the status of their orders; and when a date was changed, know the reason why. To close the gaps in our logistics ecosystem, we realized we needed to build a real-time order tracker through our Acuity Distribution Center platform that provided accurate, timely notifications. We internally called this new platform Where’s My Stuff, and it was designed to improve visibility into order status while preemptively addressing at-risk-orders in time to take corrective action.

As our team connected on a personal level, we realized that digital transformation is more than a function of IT and data and applications. It is a transformation of people and an understanding of how to instill a customer-first mindset into every aspect of our Company. Being a part of this Better, Smarter, Faster team and working on something larger than my role as a product engineer recharged my passion for my role as an individual, as well as opened my eyes to the potential the Company has to significantly distance itself from others in the industry. I am grateful for the opportunity to do something different and have the responsibility of helping Acuity Brands solve a mission-critical challenge.

We are leveraging technology to reach the next horizon of operational effectiveness.

In our warehouse operations, we have begun to apply the asset tracking and analytics of our Atrius indoor location services platform to our forklift fleet to work more efficiently and safely. This technology provides key metrics such as distance traveled, run time versus stop time, and the time needed to complete a task. With these insights, managers can improve processes and the overall efficiency and utilization of heavy equipment while controlling maintenance and capital equipment costs.

We have also implemented a traceability process for our testing equipment, giving us the ability to recall test data from every step of our manufacturing process and detect any inconsistencies. This data will help us drive greater efficiency, transparency, and accountability across our supply chain and empower our production managers to optimize business decisions and achieve higher standards.

As part of our Better, Smarter, Faster initiative we provide upgrades to our Acuity Distribution Center platform to close the communication gap between product orders and delivery. Giving the customer greater visibility into their order status allows our operational team to be able to deliver more effectively to meet customer needs.