This Summer’s service anniversary luncheon honorees marked a very special culmination of associates in attendance. With over 255+ years of service from the group in attendance, there may never be another quite like it! There were faces like Kim Brugger(30), John Wiegand(35), Lee Showalter(35) and Glenn Moyer(40) who have been with Kalas for over 30 years, making their history so intertwined with Kalas’ the company wouldn’t have been the same without them. Alongside our long-tenured honorees were treasured associates like Dan Hall and David Johns and Bradley Longer who have reached their 15-year and 25-year marks making them equally as well recognized and valued faces in our family to all of Kalas’ vast group of associates with fewer years than they. Add to that many 5 and 10 year honorees and you can see how special an occurrence this Summer’s group of recognized associates would be.

At Kalas, we are incredibly grateful for being a workplace where employees want to come to work, desire to grow and stay long enough to feel like family. From day one at Kalas, you become a part of the family. Stay long enough and you’ll start to feel the familiar support, connection, and collaboration.

Thank you to all honored associates for everything you bring to Kalas each day you arrive, today and in all of your years past. Here’s to many more ahead!

 

Join us in celebrating our Summer 2018 Kalas honorees:    

• JUSTIN KLEINSPEHN 5
• SURBHI PATEL  5 
• TIMOTHY BROCK 5
• KEITH KLINGER 5
• JOHN HEMSLEY 5
• YOVANI CRUZ 10
• TIM J EICHELBERGER 10
• DANIEL A HALL 15 
• MAR ANN KRAFT 15
• BRADLEY G LONGER 25
• KIM R BRUGGER 30
• LEE A SHOWALTER 35

Enjoy Photos from Kalas’ Summer Service Anniversary Luncheon

This fall Kalas will proudly celebrate our 60th Anniversary. Starting out of a hardware supply store in Denver, PA to today’s coast-to-coast copper manufacturing and value-add solutions company Kalas has a history filled with seasons of growth and change. To celebrate our 60 years of business and the memories that come with longevity, we will interview associates who have been with Kalas through many seasons witnessing Kalas’ history first-hand.

To start off our monthly feature honoring our most loyal employees, we want to introduce you to Russ Pannebecker. Russ has been with Kalas for over 40 years and has had the opportunity of experiencing many aspects of the manufacturing process. He started with Kalas in January of 1978 working 2nd shift in Engineered Cable Products Division. At that time all divisions were located in one single building in Denver, PA. After a short 3 months, Russ moved to the bare copper wire division where he ran bunchers and wire drawing machines on 3rd shift until moving to 1st shift after 5 years. In the late 80’s Russ was offered a promotion to 2nd Shift Supervisor. Unexpected at the time, this promotion was a highlight and a joy to him. He was able to experience Shift Supervision for each shift over a span of many years following his promotion. After that season, he was promoted to Plant Superintendent. Shortly after he elected to move to a production related job where he currently works as a Process Flow Coordinator scheduling wire production.

Over Russ’ 40 years with Kalas, several memories come to mind as highlights for him. Outside of his unexpected promotion in the 80’s, Russ describes the whole season of the early 90’s through the early 2000s as memorable as Kalas went through vast expansions and change. New equipment was added throughout Kalas, particularly Multiwires at K-1 were introduced and added year after year as well as new bunchers to keep up with Kalas’ growing business. All of the changes made for exciting memories during Russ’ time with Kalas. Russ would say the biggest change he had experienced over his time was the introduction of multiwire and the increased technology during that time period.  “It totally changed how we did things. We went from 40 LB spools to 2,000 LB reels for payoffs, truly was remarkable at the time.” Russ says.

When asked what the favorite part of his job is today, Russ says it’s the people. “I have made many friends over the years in all my position and worked with lots of good hard working associates. I have had many supervisors and managers all of which I had a good working relationship with. I enjoy My current position, but overall I would definitely say the People were the best part of any of the Jobs I had.”

As a company, we are so thankful for associates like Russ who take pride in their roles at Kalas and see the positives in working in our interesting field of manufacturing.