Kohler Company To Start Making Portable Generators

November 20 -- Kohler Co. will start making portable generators next year, joining competitors like Generac Holdings Inc. and Briggs & Stratton Corp. that already make both standby and portable generators.

The privately held Kohler-based company has made standby generators, but not portable ones. That will change in January when it formally unveils a line of portable generators that range from a 2-kilowatt inverter to a 12.3-kilowatt gasoline generator, the company said Wednesday.

The line will also include trash pumps and water pumps.

“Today Kohler offers a complete range of generators up to 3.2 megawatts that are relied upon in myriad applications: construction, telecom, residential/light commercial, industrial, mobile and marine,” said Manny Rumao, senior product manager, in a prepared statement. “Adding portable generators helps us further meet our customers’ needs for clean, efficient and dependable power.”

Generator demand has increased nationwide in recent years in the wake of devastating storms like Superstorm Sandy.

Generator manufacturers say that demand for portable generators spikes immediately after such storms, then demand for home standby generators jumps for several months afterward. The move by Kohler allows it to play in both spaces.

Jeff Engel          www.bizjournals.com   

Wisconsin Manufacturers Turn to Long-Term Temporary Employees

November 14 -- More manufacturers are gearing up to hire temporary employees, sometimes for jobs lasting many months, as they need the help but are reluctant to make permanent commitments.

Thursday, Ariens Co. said it was seeking 150 employees to build snow throwers and lawn-and-garden equipment in Brillion. Also, the company says it will hire another 150 people in January and February.

Some of the jobs could be temporary, but many new hires will stay on as year-round employees, said company spokeswoman Ann Stilp.

"The bigger challenge for us sometimes is our location," she said, since Brillion isn't a big town and residents also commute to work in Manitowoc, Appleton and Green Bay.

Recently, Harley-Davidson Inc. added 100 temporary jobs at its Menomonee Falls plant as the company prepares for the production of model-year 2014 motorcycles.

Harley says the employees have been hired for the work that runs from January until June at the powertrain operations on Pilgrim Road.

The company used staffing agencies and its website to recruit people for the jobs that pay roughly $16.75 to $23.30 an hour — similar to the pay scale at the York, Pa., motorcycle assembly plant that's seeking 400 temporary employees.

This summer, Harley completed its first year of seasonal surge production in York. That effort, also taking place at the company's other plants, is aimed at producing motorcycles closer to market demand, increasing manufacturing efficiencies and saving hundreds of millions of dollars in costs.

The company's plant in Tomahawk needs 60 more seasonal employees to work 10 months starting in January, said Harley-Davidson spokeswoman Maripat Blankenheim.

Wages at the Tomahawk plant are comparable with Menomonee Falls and the other plants, she said.

Some companies, such as outdoor power equipment makers, have long used surge production and seasonal hiring to build products close to demand and not carry excess inventory.

That's the case for Kohler Co., which hires seasonal employees to build engines in advance of the lawn-and-garden equipment season. In Waukesha, Generac Power Systems has used temporary hires to fill a glut of orders for generators after major power outages.

But more manufacturers are using the hiring strategy to fill year-round jobs while avoiding long-term commitments to employees, according to staffing agencies.

"Employers, especially Milwaukee-based manufacturing companies, seem to be favoring that because they're trying to get a handle on whether their growth will be sustained. Everybody is still in limbo about this economy. That's the bottom line," said Wendy Koppel, president and owner of Division 10 Personnel/AeroStaff, a Milwaukee staffing agency.

"Five years after the recession, this is the slowest recovery I have ever seen. One way employers are responding to this tentative feeling is they're opting for more long-term temporary employees," Koppel said.

Some companies use temporary hires as a way to try people out before they offer them permanent positions. It gives them more flexibility to fire someone if the job isn't working out or the work suddenly ends.

People hired for jobs that sometimes last only a few months should take the time they're with a company and get the inside track on permanent positions, said Jim Golembeski, executive director of the Bay Area Workforce Development Board in Green Bay.

"Even if you come in as a seasonal worker, companies are looking for people who stand out," he said.

A short stint at a manufacturing plant can be a way to sharpen your workplace skills and enhance your chances at getting permanent employment.

"One of the big problems with people who are out of work for a long time is their skills atrophy. It's a reason why many employers are reluctant to hire someone who has been unemployed for a couple of years," said Hank Cox, who recently retired from the National Association of Manufacturers in Arlington, Va., and is now a freelance writer on manufacturing issues.

"There's some good in it, and people adapt. But for most people, it can't be a good feeling to know their job is only for a few months. Overall, I think it's a negative trend that I hope doesn't become too prevalent," Cox said.

Rick Barrett                www.jsonline.com

Judge Denies Generac Request for New Trial in Patent Infringement Case Against Kohler

MILWAUKEE -- March 11 -- A judge last week denied Generac Power Systems Inc.’s request for a new trial in a patent infringement case the company brought against Kohler Co. in late 2011.

The decision by U.S. District Court Judge J.P. Stadtmueller upheld a jury verdict in favor of Kohler and its distributor, Total Energy Systems LLC, and rejected post-trial motions filed by Generac, according to court documents and a Kohler press release.

Generac had claimed Kohler infringed on a patent related to control systems on generator sets. The court found one of Generac’s claims invalid prior to trial, and the jury later determined that Kohler and TES did not infringe on Generac’s patent, and that the “remaining asserted claim of the patent was invalid,” Kohler said.

The court last week denied Generac’s post-trial motions seeking a “judgment as a matter of law” and a new trial, court documents show.

Kohler Power Systems president Larry Bryce said in a written statement that the company is grateful for the outcome of the litigation and hopes the ruling means “the matter is put to rest.”

“While we are disappointed with the jury’s findings in this particular case, we will remain diligent in aggressively protecting our company’s intellectual property rights,” said Aaron Jagdfeld, Generac president and CEO, in a written statement to The Business Journal. “As we evaluate our options to appeal this particular decision, we will also turn our attention to yet another pending case regarding the infringement by Kohler of a Generac patent.”

Generac is a Genesee-based generator and engine-powered products manufacturer.

Kohler is a Kohler-based privately held company whose products include standby generators.

Jeff Engel     www.bizjournal.com  

Superstorm Sandy Means Business for Milwaukee-Area Firms

November 2 -- Wisconsin generator manufacturers expect to feel the effects of superstorm Sandy for months as demand for their products grows in its aftermath.

Superstorm Sandy’s path of destruction across the East Coast and inland was rare both in its geographic scope and number of people affected, generator manufacturers said.

Generac Holdings Inc. estimated that at its peak, Sandy was expected to leave 8 million without power — 2 million more than Hurricane Irene last year, said Aaron Jagdfeld, president and chief executive officer of Generac, which makes home standby and portable generators.

“The devastation is just substantial and the impact of this storm, although Irene impacted a lot of people, this one impacted even more,” said Todd Teske, chairman, president and CEO of Wauwatosa-based Briggs and Stratton Corp., whose products include home standby and portable generators. “From my experience, this is as big of a storm as we’ve seen in several years.”

Briggs and Stratton ramped up production of generators over the past couple of weeks, authorizing overtime and planning to hire temporary workers, Teske said.

“We’re shipping out virtually around the clock,” Teske said.

Teske expected this storm to follow the pattern of other major storms and increase immediate demand for Briggs and Stratton portable generators, followed by higher demand for its home standby generators.

Other Wisconsin generator makers have been extremely busy over the past couple of weeks and expect that to continue.

Kohler Co., a Kohler-based privately held company whose products include standby generators, could see an impact on sales for up to six months, said Melanie Tydrich, Kohler senior channel manager of residential and light commercial products.

“We’re looking to build more (generators) than we had planned to” in previous production estimates, Tydrich said.

Genesee-based Generac expects Sandy to increase demand for its home standby generators over the next six to 12 months, Jagdfeld said.

The storm has prompted Generac to make plans to hire about 100 production workers and put manufacturing operations in a Jefferson facility that it initially intended to use for warehousing and distribution, Jagdfeld told The Business Journal Oct. 31.

The 252,500-square-foot facility, 900 N. Parkway in Jefferson’s North Industrial Park, is expected to be operational by Jan. 1, Jagdfeld said. He expects the company to add between 100 and 200 new employees total over the next year between its Whitewater and Jefferson facilities.

Generac has experienced a 17 percent compounded annual growth rate in home standby generator sales over the past decade, but only 2.5 percent of U.S. households have standby generators, Jagdfeld said.

 www.bizjournals.com     Jeff Engel

Generac Sues Kohler Over Marketing Brochure

Milwaukee – January 26 -- Waukesha's Generac Power Systems Inc. has sued Kohler Co., alleging that Kohler is misrepresenting one of Generac's products in a marketing brochure.

The allegations - denied by Kohler - are the latest twist in a running dispute between the two Wisconsin-based generator manufacturers.

At issue in the new lawsuit, filed this week in federal court in Milwaukee, are what Generac describes as false statements by Kohler about Generac's 20-kilowatt generator. The machine is among those aimed at homeowners, a key business segment for Generac.

In its complaint, Generac alleges that the Kohler brochure describes its 20-kilowatt generator as providing features not included on the Generac counterpart, including a commercial-grade engine and corrosion-proof enclosure.

Generac argues that it does in fact offer those features. But what the Waukesha company alleges is particularly bothersome is that Kohler's brochure portrays Generac's equipment as not offering something called "low-speed diagnostic exercise."

A standby generator typically is "exercised" periodically - fired up and run for a while to make sure it will operate properly when needed. That, however, can produce a lot of noise and annoy neighbors.

In June 2007, Generac was awarded a patent on a noise-reducing method for exercising a stand-by generator. That innovation and others, Generac has said, have led to its capture of "70% of the residential standby generator market."

But Kohler has infringed on the patent, Generac alleges. In separate litigation filed in October 2010, Generac charged that Kohler has been selling generators that unfairly use Generac's patented method for reducing engine speed - and thus noise - during weekly exercise.

Kohler has fought back. Denying any infringement, it has charged that Generac's noise-reduction method is not truly novel and shouldn't have been granted a patent. Kohler asked the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to re-examine Generac's application for a patent on the method. The federal agency is doing that now, and in the meantime U.S. District Judge Rudolph Randa has put Generac's infringement lawsuit on hold.

Given the patent litigation, however, Kohler was well aware that Generac's 20-kilowatt generator could be exercised at low speed, the Waukesha company said in its latest lawsuit. So Kohler's failure to indicate in its brochure that the Generac generator has the feature "is willful and malicious and done with a clear intent to deceive the public and damage Generac," the firm alleges.

In an email, Kohler spokeswoman Jennifer Taylor said that while the company does not discuss specific lawsuits, it "takes the obligation of accurately portraying our products through our advertising efforts seriously. Kohler Co. denies that our advertising is misleading in any way and looks forward to the opportunity to defend ourselves."

Meanwhile, Generac last month filed another infringement lawsuit, this one alleging that Kohler has trampled on a 2003 Generac patent on a method for monitoring and controlling multiple generators.

Kohler denies any infringement. Among its arguments, again, is that at least some of what Generac claims to have invented is not novel and not worthy of a patent. That lawsuit is pending.

 www.jsonline.com