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Celebrating Our Employees – March Honoree

Kalas is proud to introduce TED RUTH, a loyal and dedicated associate since 1978. Currently, Ted works out of our Plant 2 facility as an Associate Product Engineer, a position that aligns to his extensive product knowledge and wire and cable expertise.

Over Ted’s four decades at Kalas, he has gained a comprehensive understanding of our manufacturing process from exposure to a very wide variety of positions, from machine operator to supervisor, to today’s role in engineering. Each of his many responsibilities allowed Ted to gain an understanding and an appreciation for the copper wire and cable production process from start to finish. Through his years, Ted has been in charge of operating 5 different copper extruders, filled in operating others, moved from working in plant 1 to plant 2, had seasons working on all three shifts, was promoted to supervisor and eventually transitioned into the role he holds today. Such hands-on experience is not only noteworthy at Kalas, it is extremely valuable for every role he’s worked since, especially his current role.

Being the Associate Product Engineer requires him to craft technical specifications for manufacturing orders and cable construction which needs to also be understandable to associates on the manufacturing floor making each cable. Ted says his ability to use his product knowledge and expertise he has gained through working so many years and roles is the part of his job he is most grateful for today. Regarding this opportunity to use his past experience and knowledge, Ted shares: “It helped me as a Supervisor, the operators knew I would help them because I was familiar with the machines. My own experiences of working on the floor, then with people, knowledge of the product and the business helped me move into Product Engineering.”

It is no surprise that Ted comments he has countless good memories from his 40 years with Kalas. One memory that stands out from the late ‘70s early ‘80s comes from his time as a new 3rd shift extruder operator. He remembers Paul Witwer, one of the original founding partners of Kalas, coming into work in the late evening or early morning wishing the 3rd shift workers a Merry Christmas and thanking everyone personally for being hardworking men by patting each of them on the back, not at all concerned about shaking Ted’s dirty greasy hands.

And out of all the changes Kalas has seen as a company over his time working here, the largest change in his experience has been the expansion of our business from one plant to several divisional plants and sister companies: “When I was hired, Kalas was one building. The 9th extruder was just put in and started running. The wire department took up a small portion of the back of the building against the hardware store on Main Street. All of the wire drawing and twisting equipment were small scale in comparison to today’s wire machinery. The Battery Cable department took up the smallest area against the front wall across the street from the Denver Distributor, needing only several dozen workers to cover the three shifts. Back then, the word was “you had to know somebody to get in” and get hired by Kalas. Most of the employees on all three shifts knew each other’s name, many were close friends even knowing their spouses and families.”

Join us in thanking Ted for his hard-work and loyalty to Kalas. We are grateful for his time and look forward to celebrating his 40th work anniversary in September!

Celebrating Our Employees – February Honoree

Meet Chuck Miller. He’s will have been with Kalas for 40 years this October. Chuck currently works at Kalas Plant 2 in shipping where he has been for over 39 years of his employment.

When he began his career at Kalas, the company operated out of one single building. His original assignment was in battery cable assembly for our Engineered Cable Products Division. After a short 6 months he was able to transition into shipping and truck driving. 39 years later, Chuck is nearly an expert in all shipping and driving processes at Kalas. He has the rich history of living through all of the shipping department changes our company has made as it has expanded and technology has increased over time.

In the beginning, Chuck drove truck making local deliveries. His truck driving quickly grew in distance as the companies orders expanded. For many years he would travel for distant deliveries which could be completed within a day’s work covering much of our state, NY and Maryland. He still remembers how everything had to be lifted in and out of the trucks using hand carts before we transitioned to using forklifts! That meant lifting and unloading large orders of cable reels all on his own. Truck driving and preparing shipments took a lot of physical strength 40 years ago.

Forklifts aside, Chuck would say the biggest change he’s experienced over his time was the plant additions. Having started when Kalas was housed out of Plant 1 and making local deliveries, he has seen our company expand to it’s current state of four local facilities, one value-add warehouse on the west coast, several distribution centers throughout the country and shipments being made daily around the world.

Despite the changes, Chuck’s favorite part of his job hasn’t changed. He says it’s “working with the guys”. Some of his favorite memories include Kalas Christmas parties, company picnics and even the day to day moments where he gets to enjoy the people he works with.

It’s a privilege to have associates like Chuck working at Kalas for so long. We are grateful for his embracing various roles over the years, adapting to so many company changes, working hard while also caring about the people and company culture around him.

Join us in thanking Chuck and celebrating his history with Kalas!

Celebrating Our Employees – January Honoree

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.

Kalas Celebrates Associate Service Anniversaries

At Kalas, we view our associates as one cohesive family. We are humbled by the longevity of our associate tenure and grateful for the incredible loyalty of our workforce. At the start of the New Year, we enjoyed a celebration of our first quarter associates who achieved service anniversary milestones ranging from five to forty years. Russ Pannebecker was among the elite few Kalas associates who has achieved four decades of service. His dedication and commitment to the business are an inspiration to all of us.

We further commemorate each associate who meets or exceeds 25 years of service on a plaque that hangs in our Lancaster facility under a hand-sculpted copper tree we affectionately refer to as the “Kalas Family Tree”. Our Q1 celebration highlighted three associates who have achieved this honor. New to join the group was our President and CEO Jack Witwer, who achieved 25 years on January 7.

Special thanks to all honored guests for their loyal service to Kalas!

Celebrating Creativity this Holiday

Every year we send out holiday cards to our employees that have been designed in-house and professionally printed. This year, our HR team had the fun idea to engage our employees and their families with a fun card drawing contest for our holiday card designs as well as birthday card designs we can use all year long in 2018. 

Early November flyers went out asking for employee’s children to draw and submit either a holiday card or birthday card depending on their age brackets. Only one card could win for each, but every drawing was so special we wanted to share them here. It is a joy to see the heart and soul of our employees and a simple card drawing contest like this was one more great way to do that. 

Thank you to everyone who got involved and asked your children to submit pictures. They are each a joy to see! 

Congratulations to the winners of each contest! We look forward to enjoying your designs this season and all year long in the coming year. 

Congratulations to our winning designs!

Chrismas Card Drawing Submissions

Birthday Card Drawing Submissions

Honoring Our Veterans

Employee appreciation is important to us at Kalas. One of our core values is CARING and throughout our organization, we want to strive to show that value. This past month we had the joy of honoring our of Veterans for Veterans’ Day. Instead of saying a simple thank you this year, we decided to organize a fun challenge to win a gift card. Through asking for submissions of “selfies” with a Kalas Veteran, we had a fun way to celebrate their bravery on the honorary day and beyond.

Photos from the challenge now adorn Kalas lunchrooms across our facilities in Lancaster and Denver, PA. Collated packages with special mugs, notes, and army men went out to all the Veterans who participated in the challenge.

Congratulations to Kim Brugger, the winner of the Veteran’s Day Selfie Challenge!

Thank you Veterans for all you’ve done to serve our country.