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KMC Controls Celebrates Employee’s 52 Year Career

KMC Controls Celebrates Employee’s 52 Year Career
Chris Kreuter
Chris Kreuter sitting at his desk.

NEW PARIS, Ind. – September 6, 2022 – (Newswire.com)

KMC Controls®, an industry leader in building automation, is at once delighted and saddened to announce the retirement of Chris Kreuter, an innovator whose career spanned more than 50 years with the company. 

Chris’ career started 52 years ago when his father, Ken Kreuter, founded Kreuter Manufacturing – today called KMC Controls.

In the late-1960s Ken realized an opportunity to form his own company. “My dad wanted to design a line of controls of our own,” explained Chris, “and that’s what we started doing. We built molds and dies to make our own parts and our own controls.”

At the company’s inception, Chris worked in partnership with his father, two of his brothers, and future brother-in-law. “I was making parts on a lathe and also on a punch press when I was a teenager,” recalled Chris, three of whose brothers continue to work at KMC. Together, along with other family members lending a hand when and where needed, they fashioned parts and equipment to Ken’s designs in a three-car garage. “We used to work 12, 14 hours a day if we had to.”

In the mid-1970s, the young company relocated from Winnipeg, Canada to Thief River Falls, Minnesota. By the 1980s, manufacturing split off and moved to a site in New Paris, Indiana. By the close of the decade, the company had consolidated its engineering and manufacturing operations to its expanded facility in New Paris.

As the business grew, so did the scope of Chris’s roles at the company. “I started doing some of the tool design in the ’80s,” he said, “and I was doing some of the product design in the ’90s.” 

A small sampling of HVAC hardware he helped develop include wall-mounted sensors, the proprietary line of KMDigital controllers, the Conquest series of BACnet controllers, and the Company’s new Indoor Air Quality line of controllers and measuring devices, not to mention a system for coupling an actuator to a valve or damper, for which he holds a patent.

In his more than five decades in the business, Chris has witnessed firsthand sweeping changes in technology and how it is applied to facility controls. “We went from pneumatics [controls that use compressed air as the signaling medium] to computer electronics on all aspects of a building,” he said. “That was the biggest change I’ve seen.” 

In that same time span, KMC Controls has managed to grow while remaining true to its origins as a family-owned business committed to innovation and to the success of its customers.

Today, the original machine shop has given way to a state-of-the-art tool and die facility under the same roof as the engineering department and factory floor. Having all those capabilities in house remains one reason the company can take a concept from drawing to working prototype in a fraction of the time it takes other manufacturers in the controls industry.

Looking ahead, Chris said he looks forward to having more time for his hobbies. “I’ll probably do a lot more hunting and fishing,” he said. A pilot who has logged more than 4,000 hours in the air, he is also an avid vintage motorcycle collector.

Looking back, said Chris said he enjoys the friendships he’s made at KMC. “Good folks here,” he said. And he plans to check in on them at KMC from time to time. After all, it’s another opportunity take one of his 1930s- and 1940s-era Harley Davidson cruisers out for a ride.

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Media Contact: Jason Mills, (574) 831-8196

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KMC Controls Celebrates Employee’s 52 Year Career

Michael C
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USA

The Harris Poll Discusses ‘Quiet Quitting’ Becoming Businesses’ Greatest Fear and Management Challenge in New Podcast Episode

Libby Rodney and John Gerzema of The Harris Poll discuss the TikTok meme that became a mainstream trend in a recent episode of the podcast ‘America This Week’

NEW YORK – September 6, 2022 – (Newswire.com)

The Quiet Quitting movement is both “business leaders’ biggest fear” and a challenge that they alone can solve, according to Libby Rodney, chief strategy officer at The Harris Poll Thought Leadership Practice. Rodney shared her thoughts on the trend in an August episode of the new podcast “America This Week,” co-hosted by Rodney and John Gerzema, CEO of The Harris Poll.

During their conversation, Rodney and Gerzema explore the origins of the Quiet Quitting movement, which leaped from TikTok to international headlines in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian. They explore who’s disengaging, and why, and delve into the rise of free agent employees who want more money from corporations at a time when those corporations are more likely to instigate hiring freezes and layoffs.

Despite its name, Quiet Quitting doesn’t actually involve quitting, per se. “You’re not outright quitting your job, but you’re quitting the idea of going above and beyond,” said TikTok user Zaiad Khan. As described by BBC News, Quiet Quitting means “doing only what your job demands and nothing more. Quitting doing anything extra. You still show up for work, but stay strictly within the boundaries of your job requirements. So no more helping out with additional tasks or checking emails outside work hours.” 

A new survey that Harris Poll conducted for Bloomberg News examines the factors that contribute to Quiet Quitting. The poll revealed that in general, the younger the worker, the more disillusioned they are with their jobs and the more likely they are to quit if employers implement return-to-office (RTO) policies and reduce hybrid or work-from-home (WFH) environments.

Among the findings:

Employers Hold the Reins: More than three-quarters (76%) of Gen Z employees believe employers have more leverage in the job market than employees, compared to 56% of all employees. 

Young People Are Free Agents: Among working adults, 42% of Gen Z and 37% of Millennials have recently quit or switched jobs in the past two years; 48% of Gen Z and 49% of Millennials say they are likely to quit their job in the next year.

Fearing the Worst: Among working adults, 57% of Gen Z and 42% of Millennials are worried that they are going to lose their job soon.

Fight vs. Flight: Almost two-thirds (66%) of Millennials say they have stayed in their jobs because of economic fluctuations (e.g., rising inflation, decreasing stock market) compared to barely half (51%) of Gen Z.

Bracing for RTO: Among remote/hybrid working adults, 57% of Millennials say they would quit if they were forced to work five days a week in the office. 

Ready to Jump: Seven in 10 (71%) of Gen Z and more than two-thirds (68%) of Millennials say they are likely to try securing other job offers in order to get raises at their current jobs.

Those signs of career unhappiness are behind the Quiet Quitting movement and are why employers are concerned about productivity. 

“One thing to recognize is that this is most business leaders’ biggest fear,” Rodney said during the podcast. “This is exactly what they’re worried about and why they’re telling people to return to the office.

“The second [thing], and the most important one, is the context of this. Before the pandemic, the employee engagement rates were really low. There was a massive burnout in workplace culture, and even the World Health Organization deemed it a critical thing that corporate workplaces had to solve. The pandemic just put fuel on that, and we all had to run and sprint through this time, and maybe now we’re in more of a marathon. It’s up to companies to get people excited to be working.”

Rodney and Gerzema dig much deeper into the topic, offering more insight as well as statistics during their discussion of Quiet Quitting, which can be heard at

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/america-this-week-from-the-harris-poll/id1626151653

For additional information about the Harris Poll Thought Leadership Practice, visit:

https://theharrispoll.newswiremap.com

About Harris Poll Thought Leadership Practice

Building on 50+ years of experience pulsing societal opinion, we design research that is credible, creative, and culturally relevant. Our practice drives thought leadership and unearths trends for today’s biggest brands. We are focused on helping our clients get ahead of what’s next.

Media Contact

Madeleine Moench
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Press Release Service
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Original Source:

The Harris Poll Discusses ‘Quiet Quitting’ Becoming Businesses’ Greatest Fear and Management Challenge in New Podcast Episode

Michael C
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