GALENA, Kan. — TAMKO has been voted the area’s favorite employer once again by the communities around its base of operations.

Participants in the 2022 Joplin Globe’s Reader’s Choice Favorites of the Four States annual contest voted TAMKO Building Products the “Favorite Industrial Employer” for the fifth consecutive year, and “Favorite Employer” for the fourth consecutive year. Contest results were published July 31. 

TAMKO has nearly 80 years of operations in the Four States Area – a region where Southwest Missouri, Southeast Kansas, Northeast Oklahoma and Northwest Arkansas connect, and the location of TAMKO’s very first manufacturing plant and its current headquarters and corporate operations. From one manufacturing location in Joplin, Mo. in 1944, TAMKO has grown into a truly national manufacturer with multiple locations across the U.S. employing thousands of hardworking people over the company’s nearly 80-year history. TAMKO seeks to be the employer of choice in the communities where it operates and the company’s employees enjoy some of the most competitive wages and benefits in all the regions where it operates.

“I am thankful for a supportive community and incredibly proud of the company and our employees,” said David Humphreys, TAMKO chairman, president and CEO, and grandson of TAMKO’s founder. “To be recognized by the local community where we have the base of our operations, really the heart of TAMKO’s history, is an honor and a testament to our people, our culture and our products.”

Good People

TAMKO is well-known for its internal company culture, which is based on three generations of private ownership and family leadership. And the family atmosphere continues through the rest of the company, with TAMKO hiring multiple generations of the same family to work together. To quote longtime TAMKO Chairman and daughter of TAMKO’s founder, the late Ethelmae Humphreys: “We found that good people run in families.” 

A strong history of independence, family and American manufacturing continues today in TAMKO’s day-to-day operations and is part of what makes TAMKO “America’s Shingle.” Nowhere is this spirit of patriotism more clearly seen than in TAMKO’s continued support for veterans and first responders by hiring them for 15% of the company’s workforce, as well as providing financial and product donations to wounded servicemembers and the nonprofits that support them.

TAMKO’s founding principles are simple: work hard, do your best, be fair and honest, and hire people you can trust to do the same. Years later, those principles were solidified into TAMKO’s Core Values of “Honesty, Integrity and Compliance.” TAMKO prides itself on having an open dialogue with employees, including recurring employee surveys to identify areas for improvement. TAMKO has worked hard over the years to maintain its core, family culture, with the benefits of a hometown company, while simultaneously evolving to meet the current business climate and national growth to position the company for long-term success. 

Good Processes

TAMKO’s success is due largely to its efforts to bring all employees into its unwavering focus on Continuous Improvement, starting with the company’s first efforts toward vertical integration in 1948, to ensure quality raw materials for its manufacturing processes, then to the implementation of the company’s first Continuous Improvement program in the 1980s, based on the practices of famed statistician Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Since that time, TAMKO has incorporated LEAN manufacturing techniques and a robust Six Sigma program to further drive out variation and waste from processes and products. 

TAMKO is celebrating 20 years of Six Sigma in 2022 and since incorporating the method of using statistical data and analysis to reduce variation and improve quality, hundreds of TAMKO employees have been trained on how to use the methodology in their day-to-day jobs and have served on project teams with more than 170 full-time Six Sigma Black Belts to tackle the company’s biggest challenges and unlock TAMKO’s full potential. 

Good Products

A lot has changed at TAMKO since the company introduced its first shingle in 1945, but one thing remains the same: TAMKO’s commitment to constantly moving the industry forward with quality building products, including TAMKO’s recently launched Proline series shingles Titan XT and StormFighter IR, garnering rave reviews from contractors, distributors and homeowners. The effort, accomplished during a pandemic, required unprecedented teamwork from all parts of TAMKO’s business and was made possible by the incredible efforts of the TAMKO employee team. 

“I’ve always said, ‘The secret to TAMKO’s success is our people,’” David Humphreys said. “Thank you to each and every one, past and present, who has contributed to our success.”