Would the upscale kitchen and bath design world that adores “The Bold Look of Kohler” be surprised to know the iconic brand got its start making farm implements over 150 years ago? Or  that beautifully enameled bathtubs began when Kohler’s founder, an Austrian immigrant, put enamel on a hog scalder in the 1870s? It took a long time to become a respected household name from those humble origins, and as Kohler’s business grew, AFS Corporate Member Kohler Industrial Castings was the behind-the-scenes manufacturing hub from which all its popular plumbing products have since emerged. 

A shift happened in the 1970s that gradually took the foundry into a new lane. Kohler installed two automated molding lines––Osborne and Herman brands––which suddenly opened up new pockets of capacity for the metalcaster located in the Northern Wisconsin town also named Kohler. Initially, Kohler started making components for the Kohler engine group, such as camshafts, flywheels, crankshafts, and similar parts. Then the word of mouth traffic began, and the captive foundry slowly cracked open the door to accepting non-Kohler casting projects. The additional capacity created by the Osborne line marked the beginning of a new venture: Kohler Industrial Castings.

By 1995, KIC’s approach changed from passively filling nooks of extra capacity to aggressively molding its business model to become a service organization that’s seeking long-term customer partnerships. Today, their customer base is just under 40, with casting buyers ranging in sectors from automotive, agricultural, and construction to rail and waterworks. The green sand foundry produces castings in multiple grades of both gray and ductile iron, and management is intentional about growing market share. 
“The unique perspective we have is that we’ve been here for 152 years, so we take a very long-term approach with customers,” said Ted Nikolai, vice president, process engineering & NPI. “Relationship and collaboration is core to what we want to do. A lot of our customers have been with us for a long time, and we’re very proud of the fact that the turnover rate of our customer base is very low.

“We want to win with the winners,” he added, “and so we also want to be selective about who we do business with and make sure we’re the right fit for them. The Kohler team is committed and excited about continuing to invest and grow this business. And we are excited about finding the right long-term partners to go down that path with us. We’re at a point where we’re reshaping the path we’ve historically gone on. We have a team that’s hungry, and we’re unleashing some younger talent to go after new opportunities. We’re ready to collaborate with our customers from a product standpoint and leverage our engineering expertise to provide them with casting solutions, not just a shipment.”

Reach, Teach, and Repeat

Nikolai says customer conversations and in-person foundry tours are central to “decommoditizing” metalcasting for casting buyers and designers. “I think the circumstances of the past few years created a lot of isolation,” he said. “As younger professionals entered the industry working remotely, they gravitated toward metrics-driven tasks and, in my view, missed out on the hands-on experience of being on the plant floor—seeing and understanding everything that goes into making sound business decisions. We need to get back to that. We want to bring customers in and create those touch points so they gain a deeper understanding of our capabilities.

“This also helps us fully understand what they’re trying to accomplish so we can provide them with a solution––that might be solving a cost problem, but also solving some sort of material, weight, or quality challenge. Our business development manager, Sean Wozniak, and the team have done a good job of reaching out and making these connections. We really need to accelerate that and put it on steroids in terms of, ‘We’re here, come visit, and we will come to you. We want to understand your application.’”
Wozniak, who joined KIC about a 18 months ago, knows that getting customers to leave the comfortable confines of their office to step into the foundry is no easy feat. And educating customers is an important step toward winning their business. 

“I’ve taken a number of trips to customers and try to learn what their problems are and show them how we can accelerate their cost reductions by helping them transition from weldments or forging into an iron casting,” he said. “We know we can provide a more reasonably- priced iron casting than some of the concepts they currently have. But creating that bridge is definitely a big hurdle. There’s a lot of turnover among procurement folks, and some are just out of college.

“A lot of buyers do jump from job to job, so there is a gap of knowledge,” Wozniak continued. “We also see part designers who come up with concepts that aren’t designed for the casting process. Our goal is to sit down with them and help them understand the changes that would result in a solution. 

“Two months ago, I talked to a quality engineer from a customer, and he had never stepped foot in a foundry before. I thought, ‘How do you hold your suppliers accountable if you’ve never stepped inside a foundry?"

The wins do come, though, and with every chance to help a customer succeed comes trust and partnership. Wozniak described another occasion with a material handling customer’s design engineer who didn’t understand the necessities for draft. “He didn’t know how much draft would have to be applied or how to apply it in the modeling software,” he said. “So, one of our very tenured engineers sat down with him on Microsoft Teams and taught him why draft is so critical for us and how to apply draft in the model. That was really big. And about 10 months later, the same customer came to us with a very special grade of iron they specified––we said, ‘We can’t pour that but here’s what we can do,’ and that’s where we want to be at––providing options and solutions for the customer.

Foundry Facts

KIC can pour iron castings up to 175 lbs. and targets a mold weight of around 300-lbs. Their 42 x 32 HWS molding line can produce up to 240 molds per hour. The foundry has five 35-ton induction melting furnaces, as well as three 50-ton holding furnaces. At any given time four melters and two holders are in operation; the latter are used for duplexing––because the foundry changes iron types frequently, holding furnaces hold molten metal for a period of time which, says Nikolai, “allows us to do the change over from many different classes and grades of iron and get it into the right final chemistry. We’re creating a bath, if you will, and then controlling our inputs very closely so we get exactly what we want.” 

In terms of volumes, KIC produces over 300,000 molds per year for industrial castings, and about 135 people work in this segment of the business producing parts for outside customers. Overall, 357 people work in the cast iron division at the Kohler, Wisconsin, campus. Kohler produces about an 80-20 split on its own iron castings versus iron poured for industrial customers on the HWS line. 

Embracing Automation

Robots have taken over a lot of the hottest work. The Kohler campus boasts 145 in-house robots, both seen and unseen, all of which are 100% planned and integrated by the company’s own experienced engineering team. Robotics are employed for grinding, coating, core-setting, core unloading, mold extraction, and more. One big difference between industrial castings and Kohler’s own castings is that Kohler sinks and tubs are enameled in a separate shop across the street from KIC. And robots factor large here, as well. 

To watch a Kohler tub, for example, undergo the enameling process is to witness one hot bath. In one enameling operation, nine robots move in perfect synchronization to pick up, hold, move, and spray cast iron tubs that are so hot they’ve turned a glowing orange.

“After casting and finishing, they are reheated back up to 1700F, said Nikolai. “Then we apply glass that’s been milled into a flour consistency––it is melted and applied in either two or three coats depending on the color. The rate of cooling is then carefully controlled so that the glass is actually pushed under compression and holds to the surface of that iron. That’s another reason why chemistry control is so important to us.”

ISO-certified, KIC is currently working toward IATF certification, which it expects to complete by the end of 2026. With the assistance of outsourced partners, KIC provides its industrial customers with value-added services of prototyping, paint, heat treating, and CNC machining. They perform X-ray testing on castings as well as sand testing and provide metallurgical analysis. 

The foundry has recently added new conveyor automation, a drum blast machine, and core-setting equipment. Investment in technology is evident throughout the plant as numerous TV screens display real-time performance data and feedback to operators. In one area, for example, an operator has a screen displaying sand temperature and moisture to ensure every mold is progressing within required parameters. Elsewhere, a pouring operator can view a camera screen to watch a recipe being made or to view downtime alerts. 

Baking Safety into Culture

KIC has been on a five-year safety improvement trend and achieved its all-time best three years in 2024 with a safety record that is less than half of the industry average for reportable incidents. Nikolai asserts that a shift in the foundry’s approach to safety has created a turning point. Working with their local UAW union reps who embraced the initiative, the foundry is harnessing a behavior-based system that’s being driven by the union team, which spends time on the plant floor having conversations with employees about both work and home safety habits.  

But the hinge upon which safety ultimately swings is the people and their pride in working for Kohler, according to Nikolai. 
“It is a function of really good operators who have passion about what they’re doing and care about not only themselves, but about their coworkers––there’s also pride in coming to this facility,” he said. “We have third generation people working here and even a fourth-generation person. We have an extremely large and active quarter-century club––one of the largest inthe country. Last year, we celebrated Tommy Wagner, who contributed so much to this foundry during his 68 years of service. That tradition carries on as his son continues to work for the company in fleet management and will celebrate 47 years of service this fall.”

It’s the family vibe of Kohler that reinforces the safety culture like a protective armor. In addition, every shift meeting begins with a foundry safety talk, and KIC has about five years’ worth of these topics in reserve. But the primary messaging they’re aiming to communicate is: Be proactive. Look out for each other. Take responsibility for your safety and the safety of your co-workers.
“We never stop driving home the point that there’s no KPI worth sacrificing safety for,” Nikolai added. “And if we need to stop production to correct something, then we will stop and we will get it right.