Holley Performance Products laid off 23 people in the Bowling Green area Tuesday. The cutback comes after a month of upper-management reorganization. Jeff King, formerly president and chief operating officer, resigned and was replaced by James Wiggins, who had been chairman of the board of Holley Group. He will also continue in that position, according to an Aug. 29 news release from Holley. On Aug. 23, company management announced its intention to become a lean manufacturing operation, and four days later laid off 23 salaried employees. It touched several departments, said Tracy Harder, human resources director. We routinely look at headcount as a matter of business demands. Holley does about $160 million worth of business per year. Two executives new to Holley will report directly to Wiggins: Russell Ford, hired in August, will oversee business and factory operations, engineering, purchasing and human resources; and Joe Andersen, hired in June, will continue as chief financial officer. Two others who served under King will also report directly to Wiggins, according to the news release. They are Mark Adin, director of sales and marketing, and Shane Weckerly, manager of product management. Holley Motor Company formed in 1899 and made its first original carburetor in 1904, according to Holleys company history. It built a factory in Bowling Green in 1952.In 1968, Holley merged with Coltec Industries, an aerospace company that is a subsidiary of tire maker B.F. Goodrich. Holley stopped making original-equipment carburetors in 1980 to concentrate on the increasing auto-racing market, changing its name to Holley Performance Products. Thats also about when Holley hit its high point of employment at about 2,800.Company headquarters and the distribution center moved from Warren, Mich., to Bowling Green in 1994, and King was named president in May 1997. By then, jobs at Holley had shrunk to about 900.King and other senior managers of Holley bought the company in May 1998 for $100 million, according to B.F. Goodrichs 2000 annual report. They soon bought Hirel Technologies Fuel Injection, Weiand Automotive Industries, Lunati Cams and Lunati Pistons adding to the Holley performance line that also includes General Kinetics, Hooker, FlowTech, Annihilator and Earls with the goal of making Holley the one-stop shopping company for after-market engines. The companys Nitrous Oxide System was featured in the hit June 2000 movie The Fast and The Furious. Since King took over, Holley has grown by about 200 employees, bringing its number nationwide back up to about 1,100.In April 2000, Holley announced that it was opening a new factory in Aberdeen, Miss., to employ 150 people from the start. That was expected to create more than 100 new jobs at the Bowling Green distribution center by 2002.But that hasnt happened, according to Harder. Only about 100 employees now work at the Aberdeen plant, so the Bowling Green distribution center hasnt grown either, she said. Before Tuesday, 50 people worked at the distribution center and 550 at the factory, Harder said.