KOMT Company History
KOMT was started in 1962 by Art Berg and Max Hubbard – both coming from White Star Machinery Company – with the first offices in Wichita, Kansas and Tulsa, Oklahoma. Ron Evans joined the firm in 1965, and Bill Farris came on board in 1970. This team led KOMT in its early years as Computerized Numerical Control (CNC) revolutionized the machine tool industry. Art Berg retired as President in 1982, Max Hubbard stepped down in 1987, and Ron Evans retired as Chairman of the Board in 2012. Today, Bill Farris serves as Chairman of the Board and Brad Haas is the corporation’s President.
KOMT Wichita has a 5,000 square feet facility, staffed by outside sales engineers, an inside parts sales team, service technicians, and office management. The Tulsa office is also a 5,000 square feet location and is staffed with outside sales engineers, service technicians, and administrative personnel. The company established a Kansas City office in 1968, which services the Kansas City metropolitan area and the western half of Missouri, and an Oklahoma City office was set up in 1987 to provide better representation in the southwestern region of Oklahoma.
KOMT has always been customer oriented, and to strengthen that commitment a service department was added in 1979. It is manned by well-trained service technicians whose training continues as new innovations occur in machine tool technology.
In 1997 KOMT started funding an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), which today owns over two-thirds of the outstanding shares of KOMT stock. KOMT’s employees are its owners, meaning they each have a vested interest in the satisfaction of our customers.
The KOMT sales engineers have over 100 years of combined experience in the machine tool business, with most of those years active with KOMT. Nearly all of our sales engineers have earned the title of Certified Machine Tool Sales Engineer (CMTSE). This program was established to provide a program to acknowledge the essential competence and knowledge that is required to perform effectively as a machine tool sales engineer.
KOMT came into business on the leading edge of the technology of manufacturing equipment. As the decades have come and gone, the machines we provide have advanced rapidly in capability and productivity, but KOMT’s commitment of to the success of its customers remains unchanged.