This feature article highlights how NIX Industrial’s “Be Big, Act Small” culture and work-based learning programs are helping shape the next generation of manufacturing talent.
by Sam Syroney
When someone offers you the chance to take a tour of a manufacturing facility, you take it. That’s the opportunity I seized on my recent visit to NIX Industrial in Poseyville. Sparks fly, cranes move, and metal meets metal, all in the pursuit of making a design on paper come alive. And it is LOUD.
But during my tour, all that noise and hustle and bustle was easily drowned out by Tori Guzman’s passion for NIX and her passion for the work that goes on.
Tori is the Talent Acquisition Leader at NIX, a fifth-generation, family-owned custom manufacturer and industrial repairer based in Poseyville, IN. I was lucky enough to have Tori as my guide at NIX. She walked the shops like she built them. She pointed out machines and projects, naming each step of the NIX supply chain with the fluency of someone who’s spent decades embraced by it.
I politely nodded along as she explained the intricacies of it all, looking like I understood what the big tools did (I, in fact, did not).
I was mainly here to talk to her about NIX’s work-based learning (WBL) efforts. But in looking for a WBL story at NIX, I found one in Tori.
Like 75% of current shop-leadership and management, she worked on this same floor we were touring now. Tori attended Mater Dei and the Southern Indiana Career & Technical Center. During the spring semester of her senior year, Tori and a classmate both got internships at NIX. Tori was a Welding Intern, one of the first females working in that role on the NIX shop floor.
And to say she was intimidated by it all was an understatement.
“I was so nervous my first day”, Tori told me. “I knew the name of maybe four tools. I walked out of there after, and thought, I made a huge mistake – I am NOT equipped to do this at all.”
However, what she found wasn’t the cold, sink-or-swim shop she had braced for. Instead, it was a floor full of experienced workers who didn’t hesitate for one second to answer a question or provide guidance.
“I could ask anyone in that shop a question and they’d just tell me the answer,” she said, “or make me think on it. Everyone helped me get to wherever I needed to go.”
By the end of her semester, that nervous intern, who walked out after her first day unsure of what she was doing on that shop floor, was ready for a full-time role. She began her full-time career as a Welder Fabricator. And in a few years’ time, she transitioned to her current role in talent acquisition. Tori serves as a role model to prospective female employees, to show them that yes, women can excel in the trades.
Now, she helps run the kind of program she came up through. Last semester, under an initiative NIX launched called Connecting Classrooms to Careers, Tori visited fifteen regional schools – middle schools, high schools, vocational schools – giving presentations and prepping hands-on “industrial” projects for student groups. She educates hundreds of students across our region about careers in manufacturing and tells them how they can succeed.
When finding the next intern, Tori is also keeping an eye out for individual traits that the trades taught her to spot.
“Technical skills are only part of the equation,” she states. “I’m looking for someone who’s dependable, takes ownership, communicates well, and genuinely wants to learn. We can help someone build their trade skills…. but attitude, work ethic, and a willingness to grow are much harder to teach.”
That’s the same philosophy that NIX followed when making a bet on her. If you ask anyone at NIX how a story like Tori’s is possible, you’ll get the same four words:
“Be Big, Act Small.”
It’s the company’s mission statement, and Tori can aptly explain what it means to NIX and its WBL efforts.
“Big” is real. NIX builds life-saving equipment and critical infrastructure, serves national customers, and works alongside some of the largest companies in the country. And thanks to Tori, I can say that NIX’s WBL effort is also BIG.
The “Small” is real too. NIX is rooted in a small town where everyone knows everyone. The president of NIX walks the shop floor and strikes up regular conversations with the team. Whole departments stand in each other’s weddings. They cook out together on weekends.
Tori’s actions confirmed this. During my NIX tour, she knew everyone. Tori, saying “Hey!” with a smiling face, and being greeted back with that same enthusiasm and joviality, showed to me NIX is a community that wants to see you succeed.
“Culturally, being family-owned creates a strong sense of accountability and belonging”, said Lindsey Nix, Director of Talent, Development, & Community. “We know our team members and their families. We celebrate milestones together, support each other during difficult times, and genuinely care about helping people grow both personally and professionally.”
The NIX shop floor is a place that wants to see you succeed.
I asked Tori what other employers could learn from NIX. She thought for a moment, then landed on something that reads like a thesis statement for our whole region:
“If you don’t take a chance on the next generation, you’re going to fall behind. No matter where you are on the career ladder, you were the person who didn’t know anything once…it is so important for us, as a community, to educate our next generation of workers.”
I came to this NIX tour as someone who doesn’t know the first thing about metal fabrication or welding.
But I know authenticity when I’m standing in front of it. I saw it on that floor with Tori, with the NIX team members she greeted, and through the stories she shared. And I know a somethingteen year-old would recognize that too.
Stories like Tori’s, that are cultivated at a rooted, family business like NIX, are the kind we need to continue to recognize and encourage.