Koenig & Vits thrives in former Mirro plant

Gamble by Manitowoc real estate developer paid off

By: Ellen Zettel, Marketplace Magazine

On a Friday afternoon earlier this year, the cavernous Manitowoc manufacturing plant that once cranked out tons of aluminum cookware only a few years ago showed little hustle and bustle.

There was good reason for the prevailing calm. Employees were just finishing a catered lunch featuring chicken and beef tips to celebrate their success in attaining ISO 9001:2000 certification, a high-profile quality management distinction awarded by the International Organization of Standardization.

With an afternoon of production still ahead, however, employees returned to work. Before long, their boss - Tim Martinez - followed suit, heading back to his office by pedaling his bicycle down a main corridor of the plant, now home to the thriving Koenig & Vits, Inc., a manufacturer of aluminum coil and a growing range of custom-made products.

Culminating an 18-month effort, the certification came as good news to this plant's 80-plus employees, many of whom were affected by negative headlines in 2003.

They, like their leader Martinez, remember when then-owner Newell Rubbermaid Inc of Atlanta, announced the closing of this former Mirro Aluminum Company cookware plant in favor of production overseas.

Local headlines declared "882 people laid off by plant closing," Martinez said. "I didn't like that." 

A Manitowoc native, Martinez decided to do something about it.  He bought the facility on Mirro Drive and named it after Joseph Koenig and Henry Vits, two Lakeshore businessmen who each began their own aluminum-manufacturing firms in the late 1890s.

Martinez, a real estate developer with no previous manufacturing experience, took a substantial risk by buying the million-square-foot facility with its own aluminum rolling mill and 160 acres of countryside property for $4.5 million.

Believing that area’s most valuable asset was the availability of skilled labor, Martinez was confident that aluminum manufacturing, as much as it was part of Manitowoc’s legacy, could also be part of its economic future.

“The lack of a background in manufacturing turned out to be a significant advantage for me,” said Martinez said modestly, “I didn’t what my limitations were.”

Since Martinez took over, the firm has evolved from a manufacturing focus on cookware to a larger portfolio of specialty products.

“We have now taken a market position that we sell specialty, deep-draw quality,” Martinez said.  Through a process known as deep-drawing, sheet metal stock is formed into geometric or irregular shapes.  Commonly known, deep-draw products include cylinders for aluminum cans and cups for baking pans.

As an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) working with the likes of Harley-Davidson, which recently needed a custom-alloy frame component and gas tank for a Buell sports motorcycle, Koenig and Vits can exploit the full range of its capabilities.  Those capabilities include aluminum alloying, direct-chill casting, hot- and cold-mill rolling, slit-to-width coining, blanking, and custom packaging such as specially-designed aerosol containers.

“We have become a completely different manufacturing company than what we have been in the past 50 years,” Martinez said, referring to the then-cookware maker’s debut as Mirro in 1957 and its 1983 purchase by the Newell Company.  The former owner, now known as Newell Rubbermaid, manages a large array of diverse brands including Sharpie pens, Rubbermaid containers, Levolor blinds, and Calphalon cookware.
Although Koenig & Vits now relies on new product development for business-to-business applications to make money, part of its facility is still dedicated to cookware manufacturing.

In July 2005, Martinez leased production space to Tramontina USA, Inc., the American subsidiary of Tramontina Group, a privately-hold company based in Rio Grande Do Sul in Brazil.

Tramontina bucked trends that have sent the vast majority of cookware production overseas by choosing to make its aluminum nonstick utensils, sold by retailers including Crate & Barrel, Wal-Mart, and Kohl’s, in Manitowoc, where it had easy access to existing equipment, raw materials, and seasoned employees.

The “tribal knowledge” held by veteran workers is equally valuable for Koenig & Vits as it pursues new business here in the United States as well as abroad, Martinez said.

In fact, one of the reasons why the company decided to pursue ISO-9001:2000 was to codify that valuable knowledge as a demonstration of its systematic approach to quality improvement and customer satisfaction.

To meet requirements for the certification, Koenig & Vits employees needed to define procedures for all key business processes.  They also needed to monitor process effectiveness, develop recordkeeping system, ensure quality outputs, and pursue continuous-improvement activities – all of which were examined during a four-day audit necessary to achieve ISO certification.  ISO is a network of national standards institutes from more than 140 countries working in partnership with international organizations and governments, as well as industry, business, and consumer representatives.

Compliance with ISO principles, Martinez point out, “doesn’t change what our employee do,” but instead, ensures customers that consistent and reliable processes are being applied in the manufacture of the products they order from Koenig & Vits.

He added that, the more companies emphasize quality and price, “the more ISO is meaningful” to firms such as Koenig & Vits, which – in winning more OEM contracts – are giving overseas competitors a run for their money.

top of page