Where toilets come from...

Where do they come from? I don't mean Home Depot, but Kohler Corp or at least some of them come from there. Today, I got to see how they are made. For the last session of the Chamber Leadership Institute, we had choices of tours or shadowing to go on. Since I had not yet entered the belly of the empire in Kohler I chose the Kohler factory tour. We started at the Design Center (see previous posts) and headed over to manufacturing. The facilities we toured included the Pottery where Vitreous China products are made, the brass casting facility and the iron foundry. There were detailed stops in each with special attention to the Artist-in-residence facilities for visiting artists who work with materials and processes in the plant to create art. The foundry was the coolest with lots of molten iron being poured, red-hot bathtubs, and super-hot enameling stations. I did not realize that Kohler does industrial contract castings for things like torque converters, train parts, etc. Surprisingly, the factory buildings were very clean inside especially considering the products being made. The tour was about a 3-mile walk.

I found out where old Kohler employees go, they don't die, they become tour guides. Our guide was a 44-year veteran of the company all in shop floor jobs (grinding in particular). One observation of the group was the contrast between the upper-class aura of the village of Kohler (include the only 5 diamond resort in the Midwest) and the gritty, blue-collar work inside the factories that are hidden behind the well-landscaped trees and shrubs. Yet it is this very gritty work that provides the wealth that is there.

As far as the staff goes, I cannot fathom working a job for 20 and more years doing the same basic labor over and over (grinding the sharp edges from cast bathtubs for example) yet many people around here are happy with these jobs and compete for them. The jobs certainly don't take much thinking, but they pay well as you can see in the vehicles parked in the employee parking area. One change over the years is that all the employees used to live in Kohler, but now most cannot afford to live in the village.

It was a cool tour and well worth going on.