February 2017

44 BUILD / February 2017 , Leading the Way to the Top! Kelli-Marie Vallieres is the President and CEO of SoundManufacturing, Inc., andMonster Power Equipment, Inc. Established in 1984 by her father and his partner as a two-man companymaking sheet metal fabricated component parts for a few local companies, the organization has grown to include 70 employees, and is a full service contract precision sheet metal fabricator, providing high quality service throughout the fabrication process. Kelli- Marie has recently been honoured with the 2016 Leadership Awards title. I am responsible for setting the strategic and financial direction of both organizations. I am also very involved with the development of my workforce. Prior to taking over the family business in 2006, I was a graduate student at the University of Connecticut, earning my doctorate degree in Adult Experiential Learning. My work at UConn truly formed by leadership style. I take a learning approach to everything we do. We set our strategic plans for growth and development, identify what we know and don’t know about reaching our plans, and learn as an organization how to achieve our goals as well as support individual learning and professional development. As such, Kelli-Marie’s duties as CEO encompass the continuing supervision over Sound Manufacturing’s ongoing activities, which encompass a wide array of sheet metal fabricated components and services: engineering enhancement services, CNC punching, CNC laser cutting, CNC forming, welding, hardware insertion, mechanical assembly, screen printing, and packaging. These versatile capabilities enable Sound Manufacturing to fabricate an extensive variety of parts, ranging from simple small laser cut clips or brackets, to large enclosures with 80 or more subcomponents requiring welding and assemble. Being now in its 33rd year, the ongoing expansion of Sound Manufacturing, and its present role, represents something of a departure from the company’s early success back in the 80s, but it is a departure that allowed it to modernise with the times. This early success, and the change that it brought, is largely attributed to the business relationship that the founding duo formed with another company, working with them on the design and development of a product line in an immerging new industry into the end of the decade. “The new product line brought significant growth and revenue to the organization, and soon became the majority of the revenue,” Kelli Marie reflects. “The organizational processes were dedicated to supporting this one customer, and there was little focus on diversifying the customer base. The dedicated systems and mindset made it very difficult to grow the organization from there.” As such, Kelli-Marie’s first objective as CEO was to diversity her company’s customer base to reduce the organizational risk. “When I joined the company,” she says, “I reorganized the management system, established new work flows and systems, hired management team members with experience in areas that we lacked, and worked to develop the knowledge and skills of existing team members. Once our team was working together with a common goal and understood a systems approach to our work, we were able to expand our capabilities and customer base.” In 2011, Sound Manufacturing launched its own product line in the commercial and municipal landscape industry, as a means to create its own customer for Sound Manufacturing, Inc. Today, Sound fabricates the sheet metal components, sells the fabricated parts to its sister company, Monster Power Equipment, Inc., which then assembles the equipment and sells it on. “Our diversification efforts have provided stability, growth, and revenue to Sound Mfg,” summarises Kelli-Marie. “Our overall business strategies are to continue to grow the organization by expanding capabilities through technology and workforce development, to further diversify and grow our customer base. “Our steady growth and success is attributed to re-investment in the latest fabrication technologies, continuous learning and development of our employees, and our dedication to partner with our customers to 1701BU01