How a tour of three Mississippi manufacturing facilities turned into an extraordinary education on dirty fingernails, advanced robotics, & foam-making
Let’s start with what you might already know: Ashley Furniture Industries, LLC, is the world’s largest manufacturer of home furnishings – with 34 facilities worldwide, Ashley employs more than 35,000 people working in over 30-million square feet to produce more than 10,000 SKUs in 20 product categories, ultimately selling more than 35-million units and generating over $6.5 billion annually.
What you might not know is that the Ashley Furniture name will celebrate its 80th anniversary 2025, having been originally founded in 1945 Chicago as a store selling locally-made occasional furniture. A quarter-century later, Ron Wanek founded Arcadia Furniture in Wisconsin, a 35,000-sq.-ft. factory manufacturing eleven types of occasional tables. In 1982, the two companies merged, retaining the Ashley name and the Wanek family leadership.
Today, still led by Ron – Founder and Chair – and his son Todd – President and CEO – Ashley’s culture of leadership is stronger than ever. Despite any pressures from the outside world, Ashley leaders maintain a rock-solid sense of purpose, fortified by the company’s core values: honesty & integrity; passion, drive, & discipline; dirty fingernail (more about this later); continuous improvement; and growth focus.
And at Ashley, those aren’t just words on signs hanging in facility hallways; they’re essential elements in the everyday interactions of Ashley employees – as they work to fulfill the company’s mission of becoming the best home furnishings company, period. And I got to see it all firsthand.
Ashley’s Vice President of Rental Sales Mike Kays had invited a team from Impact RTO Holdings dba Rent-A-Center to Mississippi for a facilities tour intended to help high-performing Impact leaders learn more about Ashley – and Kays kindly let APRO tag along. Ashley’s “dirty fingernail” value is You get what you inspect and not what you expect, so this was an opportunity for us to inspect up-close-andpersonal how Ashley constructs and tests its products, consistently exceeds industry quality standards, and sustains a connected, knowledgeable, and driven employee team.
The visit kicked off with a welcome reception with our gracious Ashley hosts – Kays, National Rental Accounts Managers Chase Pitman and Jamee Thompson, and Director of National Rental Accounts and Executive Vice President Chuck Spang. The Ashley team briefed us on the company’s commitment to professional development, new technologies, and advanced manufacturing, as well as the many workforce initiatives they support to help deepen their talent pool.
“Ashley has made it a top priority to support the training and education of the future workforce,” Spang noted. “We’ve developed many partnerships supporting STEM initiatives, including a competition for robotics, which is an integral component in our manufacturing facilities.”
With a quick toast and bite to eat, the group called it a night in anticipation of an early morning bus ride and a full day touring three Mississippi-based Ashley facilities.
As our bus rolled out in the early morning sunshine, Ashley rigs were all around us on the Mississippi roadways. The company prides itself on its logistics and transportation expertise, and it was impressive to see that at work in the real world and fun to imagine where that furniture was going – maybe to an RTO store!
Our first stop was the Saltillo facility, which is America’s largest mattress- manufacturing facility – a point of great pride for the company, which uses a blended strategy that leverages the strength of U.S. manufacturing expertise with Asia’s production proficiency. With safety helmets and goggles donned, we entered the facility and watched mattresses being made before our eyes, from the coils to shrink-wrapping and boxing.
The leading-edge robotics was awesome to see in action, and we learned from the line manager that robotics has taken Ashley from primitive to automated production practically overnight, increasing just that facility’s volume from 200 to 700 mattresses a day. The company continues to invest heavily in their facilities – especially robotics – which has allowed them to reallocate employees across their production lines more effectively.
As new equipment comes online, Ashley is also continuously investing in employees, cross-training staff on various functions. Robotics provides superior standardization and efficiency, particularly for repetitive tasks. As an example, it provides consistent glue application across all mattresses; it can even photograph the mattress first to determine the right glue pattern for it.
At the Saltillo facility, we were briefed by Product Engineering Manager Penny Schipke. Schipke spends a lot of time thinking about mattresses and making sure Ashley offers the best mattresses at the right price points for rent-to-own customers. Foam is kind of a big deal at Ashley (keep reading), and Schipke and her team thoroughly research the foam used in their mattresses to ensure high rebound – how foam bounces back after it has been held down for 24 hours. Our visiting group was absolutely wowed by all the considerations that go into making every single mattress.
As our Saltillo tour wrapped up, a suggestion box hanging on the wall caught my attention. It wasn’t your typical suggestion box – it was an Idea Box, a chance for any Ashley employee to share their concepts for enhancing production and saving money. And a concrete manifestation of the company’s core value of continuous improvement, as leadership clearly values and uses employee input to improve facility operations.
As we rode toward our second stop, the chatter on the bus grew louder as colleagues shared their lessons learned and fresh perspectives with each other. We were approaching Verona, Ashley’s very own foam-making and -curing facility.
Upon arrival, the Ashley team gave us the equivalent of a Foam 101 primer.
The story of foam is legendary at Ashley: during the pandemic, the company found they needed more foam, so they took matters into their own hands and launched their own foam-production journey.
Though they still outsource a small amount of foam, this is an excellent example of the Ashley belief in vertical supply chains, which has proven to be an enduring competitive advantage for the company.
As we lunched, the Ashley team shared their expansion plans as growth continues and how they intend to maximize efficiency across their manufactuing facilities. They also told us about how doing regular customer visits plays a key role in their company culture, because there is simply no substitute for being out in the market and experiencing directly what’s working and what’s not.
Final stop of the day: the Ecru facility, the country’s largest upholstery plant. We began by learning about fabric kits. Once they arrive from their global journey, the sewn items go into large industrial dryers to help de-wrinkle them post-shipping. Fun fact: if you stacked up the sewn items that the facility receives within each 24-hour period, they would be taller than the Empire State Building.
We got to visit with the Ecru facility’s Quality Lab Manager Andrea Baker, who schooled our group all about Ashley’s extensive testing methods. The testing process for all the beautiful fabrics that go onto Ashley’s furniture begins at the overseas mills that create the fabric, then they’re tested again upon arrival at the Mississippi facility – color-tested for any bleeding or running, and seam-tested to safeguard against breakage. The fabric is also washed to check for fraying, pilling, or rubbing.
Next, we moved onto foam testing, which is super-fun to witness, by the way! Foam testing includes dropping a series of weights and a drop bag on it to ensure resistance to normal wear and tear. We watched a 1,000-lb. bag being dropped on every part of a sofa to ensure its sturdiness. The facility also has a professional “sitter,” whose job is to test sofa foam for comfort by sitting on sofas for a specific length of time every day. Let’s just say Ashley is serious about their quality testing, which translates into the long-term comfort and durability of their sofas and other upholstered furniture.
Our last stop was the sofa production line. Ashley practices “Just-In-Time” production, building furniture piece by piece as it’s ordered, so the team works hard to make sure all the diverse components are always in place and ready to go. The line moves surprisingly fast, and every station has its own piece of the furniture puzzle that skilled team members work on efficiently and move down the line quickly.
Sadly, our Ashley Mississippi Trifecta Tour (not an official moniker) had to come to an end. But happily, the immense amount of information we absorbed during our whirlwind visit was definitely instructive, and made us all proud to be part of an industry whose leaders are devoted to such superior standards of product quality, staff development, innovation, and integrity.
“We’re deeply appreciative of Mike and his team for inviting our top performers to the Ashley factories in Mississippi,” Impact Vice President of Operations Paul Metivier concluded. “It was fun and educational to see how the company’s products are made, and his team was wonderfully knowledgeable and gracious. The insider perspective we’re taking home with us will help us tremendously as we sell their exceptional goods to our customers. We’re happy and proud to continue our strong partnership with Ashley Furniture Industries.”
Us, too! Thank you, Ashley, for taking our professional development to the next level – and showing us how it’s done, from the inside out!
OUR ASHLEY MISSISSIPPI TRIFECTA TOUR
STOP 1
Facility: Saltillo
Lines: Coils & mattresses
Size: 834,000 square feet
Number of Employees: 560
Production Highlight: Produces 20,000 hybrid mattresses per week
Fun Facility Fact: Ashley makes their own bedsprings onsite by directly sourcing coil wire.
STOP 2
Facility: Verona
Lines: Foam pouring & storage
Size: 752,000 square feet
Number of Employees: 280
Production Highlights: Foam loaves
Fun Facility Fact: Ashley has its own rail spur to bring in the chemicals needed to create the foam.
STOP 3
Facility: Ecru
Lines: Furniture & upholstery
Size: 2,541,000 square feet
Number of Employees: 2,500
Production Highlights: Quality testing & assembly lines
Fun Facility Fact: There’s an Ashley Museum located at the Ecru facility, showcasing the company’s history and manufacturing awards.
Jen Troke is APRO’s Vice President.
