Nix Industrial

In 1902, Charles Nix immigrated from Germany to Posey County in rural Southern Indiana where he settled and bought 1 of 5 blacksmith shops operating in the area. When he made that purchase, it’s doubtful Charles could have envisioned the sprawling industrial company serving a global manufacturing industry that would grow from that humble beginning. Likely, too, he never dreamed that the 5^th generation of his progeny would be at the helm of that company, or that the 6^th generation would one day begin to spend time with the business, learning from their parents how best to continue their success and growth.

Charles’s 2 eldest sons took over the business from their father. Their youngest brother, Carl, joined the ironworking enterprise and ran it with his brothers from a small, dirt-floored building for several years before moving across Poseyville and erecting a small block building at the same address where the headquarters facility operates today. In 1957, Carl and his son Carl Jr. (Sonny) constructed a new building on the site by hand and formed the Carl A. Nix Welding Service. In 1975, the Nix family’s 4^th generation joined the team when Carl Jr. ‘s son William (Bill) came onboard.

The 5^th Nix generation is now leading Nix Companies, the legacy business and holding company that owns a number of service-oriented businesses and supporting services. One of these supporting businesses, Nix Industrial, is a custom manufacturer and industrial repair company with locations in four cities across Indiana and Ohio. Its functions include metal plate and heavy fabrication, advanced machining, powder coating, abrasive blasting and painting, along with fleet, engineering and professional services.

Also under the Nix Companies umbrella are Huncilman Sheet Metal Fabrication and ProFab Alliance, located in New Albany, Ind. and Poseyville, Ind., respectively. ProFab Alliance is responsible for consulting, franchising, and helping shop owners grow their businesses, maximize profits and live a more balanced life. Huncilman is principally a metal fabrication company with capabilities that include laser cutting, precision forming, welding and e-coat painting. Huncilman has grown and adapted over the years, positioning for growth and enhanced performance and were acquired by Nix Industrial in 2024.

It wasn’t always assumed the company would grow into this enterprise, or that the family was planning to create a global legacy.

The first opportunity for growth came when – one by one – the four remaining blacksmith shops in Posey County began to close their doors. The Nix family’s 2^nd generation leader Carl Sr. acted quickly to diversify the shop’s services, adding a small welding shop to service agricultural equipment repairs. “I think he saw that the era of blacksmithing was coming to a close,” said the company’s Director of Public Relations and Training, Lindsey Nix. Lindsey pointed out that in several cases, the younger generation of Nix owners began looking at new business opportunities to grow. “Carl Sr. saw that we needed to discover what the next new thing was going to be, and that led to buying their first welder and training themselves to use it.” They also used an acetylene carbide generator for their cutting torch. That needed water to operate, she explained, but running water was not available in the shop. The innovative Nix family used a small wagon to haul a water tank home on their lunch break, fill it with water, and return to the shop to replenish the generator. “The family were always innovators,” Lindsey said. “That was the 2^nd generation, but we’ve always tried to be innovative and scrappy. I think they just thought, ‘it’s going to cost a lot of money to get water to the shop, so let’s just fill the tank at home and we can keep working.’ If he hadn’t gone through with the welding machine, we would not be in business today.”

Lindsey’s husband Matthew, along with her brother-in-law, Adam, built on Nix’s diversification when they became the 5^th generation to lead the company. As they started some work with the smaller plastics plants in Poseyville and grew comfortable with existing operations, they decided it was again time to take Nix in new directions. “We hired our first employee outside the family in 2010,” she said, “and now we’re up to more than 200 folks at 5 operating locations. A lot has happened in the past 15 years!”

With the land and dealership, Nix gained experienced agricultural equipment mechanics and additional facilities. The expansion continued, absorbing companies offering more products and services to customers. A structural fabrication purchase, more fabrication shops, machine shops were also added – “Being able to take projects for our customers from start to finish, where we actively control the whole manufacturing process for our customers has been really important for us,” Lindsey said.

Nix now encompasses skills and capabilities far beyond those offered at the turn of the 21st Century. A single $2-million expansion with a state-of-the-art coating facility has just been completed. Nix processes all the structural steel tubes, columns and beams for buildings at its Rockport plant, with steel packages processed in Poseyville. “Whether we do the design or work from the customer’s design, a lot of things are happening there,” Lindsey explained. “We’re doing work in the mining industry, building skips (specialized containers) to bring the mined product from underground to the surface. We’ve built an elevator for the mineshaft, bringing the miners up and down. We’re building mixers and tanks. If it can be built of metal and will fit in our shop, we will build it.

Nix Industrial first dipped their toe into the MRG pool with a successful $25,000 award and then a $175,000 award for a transformative measurement project.

Their second award supported nearly $500,000 in investments, including a RoboRail (CNC robotic 3D profile cutting machine) to combine 3 manual processes into a single automated process and a Quantum Max Faro Arm coordinate measuring machine (CMM) to allow precise, three-dimensional quality control measurements.

“That grant allowed us to get the advanced technologies sooner to help grow our company,” said Production Support Coordinator Ashley Kiesel who served as Project Lead. “We would not be where we are today without that grant assistance to help advance our capabilities to continue our competitive edge.” She acknowledged that the Nix team gained support from the companies providing the equipment as well as staff at Conexus Indiana.

Ashley described the function of the equipment purchased with the help from the 2^nd grant to include bringing work in-house that used to be outsourced to vendors. “That makes us more efficient and cuts down costs to our customers,” she said. Along with the Faro Arm, the RoboRail will increase quality standards for the company. “That is extremely important for our success,” she added. “We believe it also drives outside economic investment to the State of Indiana.” The Faro Arm opens a niche in the government contracting world for Nix, she said. “We learned that quality control needs to match specific government requirements in our work, like small submarine welding jobs, where tolerances are super strict.”

Together, the projects leverage Nix’s existing smart technology in a variety of ways. With the RoboRail, Nix’s in-house design team can easily send production-ready digital files to the floor through advanced communications. Machine learning technologies included with the RoboRail actively improve the accuracy of part marking and cutting, and artificial intelligence enables the cutting of several different profiles of material without requiring a separate machine and team member to run the part for each profile cut. The Faro Arm ensures each product meets stringent dimensional requirements, catching rework before it gets to the customer and allowing Nix to more quickly discover the root cause of any tolerance breaches.

The Nix organization not only promotes itself as growth-oriented but demonstrates that throughout its organization. One team member was promoted to Material Processing Lead, another to Quality Control Lead, and 2 new hires backfilled their previous roles. The workforce is considered family, and continuous education and humility are modeled. “We want to build a great business with great people,” Lindsey said. As evidence of that, leadership reports to the entire team twice yearly about the investments being made in the company, and the results – both realized and anticipated. “It’s part of the culture of quality we nurture,” she added. “Related to quality -that’s one great thing about the Faro Arm. It catches those potential quality issues so they are reworked and don’t get to the customer where they can become a warranty issue. We have a culture of quality and it’s a badge of honor when the team sees the number of days without a quality event ticking up.”

Poseyville is a small town of just about 2,000 people, but Nix has pride of place as the largest employer there. The company recruits through multiple channels, including LinkedIn, Indeed, Facebook, Zip Recruiter and school fairs. There is no certification or credential needed for new hires, and required skills are simple: the basics of CAD software, CNC equipment experience and the ability to read a tape measure. “We are always on the lookout for good, genuine team members,” Lindsay said. “Having the skills already is great, but we can train team members how to do the job. You can’t necessarily teach someone to be a good person.”

The manufacturing world is constantly advancing and evolving. To nurture a competitive edge, success requires finding a way to adapt and working alongside new technologies, Lindsey said. She recalled that water-hauling wagon to feed the acetylene carbide generator. “I’m not sure how they would have gone about it without that generator,” Lindsey said, “but I know they would have found a way. It would have delayed the company’s advancement, so it was most certainly a needed technology.”

Her message: don’t hesitate to embrace technology adoption initiatives. “If you have a plan or know of a new technology that can give your company an advantage, go for it. Don’t let a budget stop you when there are grants out there like the Manufacturing Readiness Grant to assist you. The RoboRail and Faro Arm project would not have made financial sense without the MRG, she said, and could not have been justified at that time. But the MRG was there and, with the help of team members who researched what technology was available, leaned on provider resources for information and advice, and called on the Conexus Indiana team’s expertise, Nix Industrial was able to take the next step to ensure its continued competitive edge in the market.