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Fuzz Martin: [00:00:00] Well, hello and thank you for pushing play on 15 minutes with Fuzz a show about the positive things happening in and around Washington County, Wisconsin. My name is Fuzz Martin, and each week we talk about the people, events, organizations and opportunities that make Washington County a great place to live. This week we’re talking about a company that is invested in the community as they do with each of the communities where they reside. Steve Kenitz is the quality manager for Milwaukee to own. He joins me on today’s show to talk about the company, its values, what brought them to West Bend and all of the things they do for the community.
Well, actually, just some of the things they do for the community because This is a 15 minute podcast with that. Here are 15 minutes on Milwaukee tool in West Bend with Steve Kennett’s on 15 minutes with fuzz.[00:01:00]
Steve, thanks for coming in. So Milwaukee tools celebrated its 100th anniversary last year, which is pretty amazing. Can you give us a. A brief overview of the company, how Milwaukee tool became such a well known name in the industry and, and, uh, all of that.
Steve Kenitz: Yeah, absolutely. Um, obviously not a historian.
I’ve actually only been with the company, coming up on three years now. So obviously there’s a lot of details and points that I’m not. Very familiar with, but a little bit of background. So, obviously founded in 1924, by age Peterson, actually kind of a response to the, Ford motor company, Henry Ford.
Fuzz Martin: Okay.
Steve Kenitz: Kind of where we, we got our start was actually with the quarter inch, portable drill that they were needing to use for their assembly lines. It was actually a product called the hole shooter. So it was actually the first lightweight one handed drill, which kind of revolutionized the productivity that a Ford motor company had at their manufacturing lines.
Excellent. Yeah, so, and then kind [00:02:00] of going on. So after that, World War II obviously was a very big kind of economic booster with the, all the different companies across the country. Trying to help the war effort.
Fuzz Martin: Yep.
Steve Kenitz: So with that again, kind of just building off the original whole shooter that we had going to more like half inch drills, some, some kind of focusing more on the, the, the portable products that we can try to offer the different manufacturers.
And then kind of after world war two, there were a couple ups and downs. But not to skip too far forward. Really what. What set Milwaukee apart, and when they really kind of exploded onto the scene was actually, as recently as in the 2000. So about about 20 years ago, Steve Richman came in as the president and CEO of Milwaukee tool, and really wanted to focus on kind of resetting what Milwaukee tool is about and what we do, kind of shifting the kind of the vision and scope of what Milwaukee kind of use itself as.
Rather than being a power tool company, we actually like to think ourself as a solutions company. So we’re not just making tools, we’re making solutions for, [00:03:00] uh, the end user for our customers. Really? What kind of drives setting us apart is focusing on not just the end user, but kind of the professional, Not to say that Milwaukee Tool doesn’t care about, you know, Bob, the DIYer.
But if we focus on Jim, the electrician, the one that’s professionally using these tools day in and day out in the field, , not really having to worry about Bob, the DIYer is kind of something that comes along with that. So if we’re, if we’re focusing on making the highest quality products that we know that the people using them 40, 50, 60 hours a week are, Now, me, myself using products in the garage, they’re going to be more than More than good for that.
Fuzz Martin: Sure. You trust the products that the pros trust, right? Yeah, absolutely. So speaking of that, the, the product line is incredibly diverse. So you, you do have power tools, you do have, PPE, you’ve got everything in between. What sets Milwaukee tool apart in that space? What, what makes them that notch above?
Steve Kenitz: Again, kind of going back to that, the point I was talking about where, again, we’re, we’re looking for solutions, [00:04:00] not just tools, right? So that’s where, you know, your heated jackets, your, First aid kits, all the, the vacuum products that we now make all sorts of different things that if it’s going to help a customer, you know, in the field, in the line, that’s what we’re about.
Fuzz Martin: Sure. Certainly. I’ve got some friends and family that work at Milwaukee tool. They’re very proud of the company’s culture and its values. Can you share more about the culture of Milwaukee tools and how it shapes day to day operations, both as a company as a whole and here in West Bend?
Steve Kenitz: Yeah, a lot of companies, you know.
A lot of people get a new job. They preach culture. A lot of it might be lip service. You know, at Milwaukee coming from the top down again from Steve Richmond, our president CEO, really tries to drive that point home. And actually, it’s kind of baked into how we actually evaluate whether it’s a new, a new position that has a candidate applying.
Or if we’re just kind of evaluating our own teams that we have internally already is, you know, how good of a culture fit are they? We have a handful of different cultural pillars that we, expect of our employees here. [00:05:00] Where we actually kind of make sure that, you know, we’re focusing on the right thing.
So, you know, being open and candid. With somebody that you’re not just, you know, turning into a yes, man and giving people the answers. They want to hear empowering people to be, you know, to take responsibility and take charge of projects are working on things like that. , so we actually really focus on that from a management leadership side, but also, you know, there’s things that we do internally to kind of reward people as well with, you know, that exemplify our cultural aspects that we really want to drive and really want to push.
Fuzz Martin: Great. It sounds like you kind of have a, practice what you preach mentality over there, right? And, how does that then reflect into the product that is created?
Steve Kenitz: Kind of the same thing, right? So, you know, we, we push for people to be open and upfront and candid and, and, and real and truthful with each other.
Right? So. Again, Milwaukee is a very large company, the West Bend facility that we have here locally might be different than how we operate at one of our different sites, but, um, with that kind of [00:06:00] cultural push coming from the top down, we all kind of operate the same in that, in that aspect, you know, so if we, if we have operators here at our West Bend plant where, you know, they think one of the processes we do just doesn’t make sense, We encourage them to speak up, you know, if something doesn’t smell right, say it.
Fuzz Martin: Yeah, excellent. So speaking of the West Bend facility, it’s relatively new. Broke ground in 2020, right? Yes,
Steve Kenitz: correct. Broke ground in 2020. And then we actually had our grand opening in August of 2022. There are obviously people in the facility before that. Our grand opening ceremony was August in 2022.
Fuzz Martin: What?
Inspired Milwaukee tool to expand to the West Bend, uh, area here and, and grow within our community.
Steve Kenitz: Yeah. So, some background on the West Bend facility, obviously broke around the 2022 grand opening two years later. The, the focus for the West Bend facility is, hand tools that are made in the USA.
So everything that we do is made right here in West Bend. We don’t, outsource anything overseas. It’s, it’s all done here, right here in [00:07:00] West Bend. Hand tools is a relatively new business unit to Milwaukee tool. You know, obviously focusing on the power tools and portable aspect like we were talking about before, hand tools launched, I believe.
Again, not a historian. I might have my date wrong here, but I believe in 2011 was when Milwaukee came out with their first. Kind of having hand tools operate as their own business unit. And with that, , the one thing that Milwaukee didn’t have was a made in USA line. So what a lot of different unions, trade groups, things like that, you know, if you’re a 17 year old, 18 year old looking to become a union electrician, a lot of times what those unions will require, you know, they’ll give you a list of tools that you need to buy.
And a lot of those are going to be required to be made in USA. So there’s a very large portion of customers that we. Basically had 0 percent market share in because we didn’t have the products that they could, they could purchase. So with that came the need for made in USA hand tools, which is what we do here in West Bend.
With that then, currently what we produce is, several different SKUs of cutting [00:08:00] pliers and about 19 SKUs currently of screwdrivers.
Fuzz Martin: Okay.
Steve Kenitz: And obviously we’re not going to just continue to do just that forever. Sure, you know down the line eventually i’m sure there’s other projects and products that will that we’ll make public to, all the customers out there.
Fuzz Martin: Excellent. Excellent. So how many individuals do you have employed here in the West Bend facility?
Steve Kenitz: Between, um, you know, just the operators, engineers, management, things like that, all in all, we’re at about 225 to 250 in that ballpark. Okay,
Fuzz Martin: great. Yeah, it’s great. Sometimes we go like out to lunch and, you know, like show up at B dubs or something and there’s a whole table full of Milwaukee tool polos on, or this time of year jackets, I guess.
Do you currently have any roles open for anyone who’s interested in joining the team? What kind of roles are available?
Steve Kenitz: Yeah, we, so at any given time we have, we have a handful of different roles that are open, anywhere from just an operator to, engineers, um, HR, things like that. So kind of a broad.
Spectrum of different opportunities that we have here in West Bend
Fuzz Martin: and when somebody joins the Milwaukee tool team [00:09:00] as an employee, and specifically maybe here in West Bend, what kinds of opportunities for growth and advancement do they have within the company?
Steve Kenitz: It all kind of depends on what the employee wants to do, right?
So we, we like, we like to keep things internal. Obviously, you know, if there’s a good candidate that comes from elsewhere, we’re, we’re going to take a look at them, but one thing that Milwaukee really prides themselves on is investing in their current employees. So whether it’s training and development classes, they want to take certifications, they want to get, you know, there’s all sorts of different avenues that employees can explore for developing, developing themselves for whether it’s a completely different opportunity, whether it be in West Bend, Brookfield or corporate office, things like that.
Sure. But we were always kind of. We’re always growing, we’re always shifting, we’re always changing. So, you know, we’ve had more than I can count, instances where we have somebody that goes from being an operator to a, set up tech to a quality tech, you know, an engineering tech, there’s, there’s always opportunities that we have, not just internal to West Bend, but within the company as well, that, that people, you know, we have brought people up and built them and they’ve, they’ve taken the opportunity to grow.
But also we’ve [00:10:00] had some, employees that, you know, the next step for them they see is maybe getting in into the new product development side of things and maybe taking a job at our Brookfield office or downtown Milwaukee office.
Fuzz Martin: Sure. And you’re, you’re a quality manager, right? Correct. What does that role mean for you?
What do you get to do there?
Steve Kenitz: A handful of different things. What my, me and my team focus on is, um, a lot of the kind of improvement to the processes that we currently have now. You know, making sure we’re not, scrapping as many products, making sure our processes are more robust, making sure that, you know, documentation is online, making sure we’re setting up our operations team for success.
Quality is kind of, it’s obviously its own little thing, but quality is also a part of every, everything that we do at Milwaukee tool as well.
Fuzz Martin: Sure. Okay. Excellent. You Milwaukee tool has a strong community impact team, and you’ve got initiatives focused on housing, hunger, education, veterans. Can you share some of the examples of how Milwaukee tools making a difference in those specific areas?
Steve Kenitz: Yeah, absolutely. That’s actually one of the more rewarding parts of my job, actually, in the chair [00:11:00] for the community impact team at West Bend. Oh, excellent. So I have about four or five people that are on that team with me. Again, you mentioned the pillars that we have housing, hunger, education, and veterans.
Being again, a new facility, it’s, you know, we’ve had a little bit of a challenge trying to find new organizations to partner with, but in about the year, year and a half that we’ve actually had a community impact team, we’ve, we’ve found a lot of great organizations that are just right here in West Bend and some others within Washington County as well.
You know, we’re, we’re a very strong partner with Habitat for Humanity here in West Bend for the Washington and Dodge County chapter. Fortunate part with that was we already had a very strong relationship with them through our corporate offices and that was one that we didn’t really have to build.
We just kind of picked it up and ran with it.
Fuzz Martin: Sure.
Steve Kenitz: We’re also partnering with half shelf or sorry, excuse me, full shelf food, food pantry. We want it to be full shelf and not half shelf. That’s why we have partners. Correct. We partner with Kurt at the veteran’s office downtown here. We’ve done a handful of events with him and his team.
That’s honestly probably been one of the more rewarding projects or partners that [00:12:00] we’ve, we’ve gotten. Some of the big efforts that we’ve done there, we’ve done, a lot of grave marking for the Memorial Day flag project. So. If your listeners aren’t aware, every Memorial Day, all the grave sites for the veterans of Washington County, whether it’s a small 10 gravesite cemetery to, you know, a thousand site, grave cemetery.
What we, what we’ve been doing is going around with all the old documents that may have from the churches were. And when they’re trying to go mark these sites for the Memorial Day flags, they are using 30, 40 year old pieces of paper, just trying to find the names at the cemetery. What they’ve actually done is developed an app that you can have in your smartphone where we’re taking those lists, but then we’re going into the app.
And as we’re going to each gravestone, finding each veteran, we actually log it in the app and it actually drops a pin where that grave site is. So when they have to go back, And mark the headstones, they just pull up the app and they have all the gravesites they need to need to mark and it just makes the whole process so much more efficient and doesn’t take as much manpower and [00:13:00] time for them to get that done.
Sure,
Fuzz Martin: my family and I are our daughters every year we’d go in and mark the flags. And yeah, it’s a usually used to be a sheet of paper and then people shouting out a name and then everybody looking trying to find where that had some insight. Yeah, again, sometimes they’re super worn down and hard to read and.
Steve Kenitz: Yeah, I’m going off memory here, but I believe at one point when we, first got this project kicked off, I believe there was upwards of eight or 9, 000 grave sites in Washington County that need to be marked. It might not be that high, but it’s, it was more significant number than I had expected. Yeah, I wouldn’t have expected that.
So that’s, that’s one thing we’re trying to continue to have, not just our community impact team, but all the employees at West Bend to try to participate in. One of the, one of the great things about Milwaukee tools, they actually, we actually offer. Paid volunteer time to every single employee.
So. Somebody might have vacations and time off they want to spend with their kids. We actually have a separate bucket of time that is just allowed for volunteering. So they’re not having to use their own personal time. They’re getting, [00:14:00] they’re getting paid and compensated to, to volunteer and partake in those activities.
Fuzz Martin: Excellent. What are some of the milestones that Milwaukee Tool is most proud of and what’s next on the horizon?
Steve Kenitz: Obviously the, the 100 year anniversary is a huge one, right? You know, a lot of companies don’t even make it past the, the one, two, three, 10 year mark. So the, the 100 year celebration was really a huge, huge milestone for the company.
And kind of the moniker we had at that was, you know, we’re just getting started, right? Obviously a lot of the growth recently, in the last couple decades has really launched Milwaukee to the front of the scene. And I feel like that, that moniker of the just getting started is really true.
We’re, we’re just scratching the surface on what we can do. In terms of creating solutions for all of our end users, but for, for the West Bend plant alone, you know, again, we’re a new facility where we’re constantly changing, you know, we’re just really looking forward to all the other opportunities that are going to be coming our way.
For, for what’s going to be next for West Bend.
Fuzz Martin: [00:15:00] Excellent. You have a partnership with Moraine Park Technical College. Can you talk about that partnership and what that brings both to, the community, the students and the company?
Steve Kenitz: Yeah, absolutely. You know, we’ve, we kind of got rolling with them.
We wanted to see if, a couple of people at West Bend could even just get involved with some of the boards they have. And that, that relationship has really, really evolved with some of the other members of the leadership team at West Bend. We, this past year, actually donated, a few hundred thousand dollars worth of equipment to Marine Park.
Great. It was equipment that we were using, essentially, essentially brand new equipment that, we may have realized maybe just wasn’t for us, or we, we, we didn’t need it moving forward, things like that. So. What we really want to do is give back to obviously a local technical college that really focuses on, on the trades, on the, you know, the specific things that we’re also looking for in West Bend.
And that’s not to say that we’re just trying to, you know, get a relationship so we can just steal talent from there. Right? Right. We just truly want to invest in the, the younger generation coming up that wants to get into the trades. [00:16:00] Or even people that have been in a career for 20 years and realize it’s not for them.
And they want to go back to, you know, be a plumber, HVAC technician, electrician, anything like that. We just want to make sure that we’re taking care of realistically the source of where we might get a lot of our, our employees from, uh, and whether or not they come to Milwaukee tool or not, we just want to make sure that we’re supporting those kind of foundation pieces in the community.
For benefiting the trade as a whole.
Fuzz Martin: Absolutely. And that’s a great part of that mission to better the community for sure. So. For those who are here in Washington County might be considering a career at Milwaukee Tool or perhaps supporting your community initiatives, what’s the best way to get involved or can they, uh, check out jobs or any of that kind of stuff?
Steve Kenitz: Yeah, so we have a LinkedIn page, Facebook page, if you just Google Milwaukee Tool careers or jobs, everything will be on there. Um, you can always stop by, and pick up, or drop off a resume. Sure. We don’t really do the paper applications. I don’t believe anymore. It’s pretty much all, all online now.
I believe, but, you know, [00:17:00] obviously to, to get involved with us, in terms of like the community impact projects, obviously we want you to be Milwaukee to employee, but you know, there, there’s always going to be opportunities here in West Bend for us, whether it’s, you know, job openings, community impact projects, opportunities for once a year, once you’re in the company, things like that.
And again, we’re always looking for more help on the community impact side. You know, there’s no shortage of work to be done here in the community. We’re always looking to find new partners, new organizations to, to get with and help. You know, and we can, we can support them in multiple ways. I know we’ve been kind of hitting on the, the volunteer portion of it, but we can, you know, we’ve done tool donations for some of the local schools and organizations.
You know, we’ve, we’ve done monetary donations and sponsorship, sponsorships, things like that. So there’s multiple different ways that we can get involved with the community and give back. It’s not just, just not just time, but there’s many other ways that we, we like to make an impact here in West Bend and Washington County.
Fuzz Martin: Awesome. Well, we’re. Extremely glad to have you in the community. I told you I swapped [00:18:00] over a whole line of tools in my garage because you guys put a plan here and invested in our community. So, but we really appreciate it. And Steve, I appreciate your time. Thank you for coming in. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.
for having me.
Thank you again to Steve Kenitz of Milwaukee tool for joining me on this week’s episode of Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz. If you ever have an idea for the show. Shoot me a message, email fuzz at fuzz martin. com that is fuzz at fuzz martin. com or you can use the form at fuzz martin. com slash guest Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz is available on Spotify, Apple podcasts, youtube at fuzz martin.
com. Or wherever you prefer to listen to podcasts. New episodes come out on Tuesdays and I will talk to you next Tuesday, right here on Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz
