KZCO, a manufacturer of motorized valves and controls, has been selected as The Manufacturing Business of the Year for 2014 by the Nebraska Business Development Center (NBDC). Each year this award is presented to a Nebraska business that demonstrates leadership in employee involvement, continual process improvement, customer and supplier relations, innovation and new product development, sales growth, and sustainability.
Scott Morgan, COO and CFO, says KZCO has benefitted from several programmes offered by the NBDC in the past couple of years. During the summer of 2013, the KZCO management team participated in a 2-day Lean Product Development class, and in the fall of 2014, NBDC invited KZCO manufacturing to participate in the inaugural Intensive Entrepreneurship Program. “That programme really identified some new opportunities for us”, Morgan says. “It opened our eyes to finding leads and future business in ways we didn’t do yesterday.”
KZCO began in 1976 with one product, the Hydra-halt, which replaced manual valves on fertilizer applicators with this new hydraulic remote control. Over the next decades, KZCO has introduced a wide variety of other Agricultural and Industrial products. Today, KZCO is a global producer and a Tier 1 supplier to a number of companies in North America who require the use of a waterproof electric actuated valve.
