Spotlight:

Knobs and Handles Catalog

About Northwestern Tools

Northwestern Tools, a family run organization, opened for business on January 27, 1942 by Gene Thomeczek, who foresaw an industry need for quality machine tooling.

From our beginnings on Northwestern Avenue in Dayton, Ohio, the people at Northwestern Tools have continued to dedicate themselves to fulfillng this vision. Northwestern Tools is still owned and actively managed by the Thomeczek family, ensuring a continuation of this commitment.

For the last 75 years, Northwestern Tools has grown from an initial offering of just 4 products, to over 2,000 domestic, high quality components to service our customers.

This growth forced Northwestern to move to our present Hempstead Station Dr. location in 2018 to house the growing production needs.

Expanding Into New Markets

As we have continually grown our product lines, we have been able to expand into new markets and industries such as:

  • Aerospace
  • Medical
  • Fasteners
  • Lifting & material handing (with the addition of ADB hoist rings)

Adding Automation to Manufacturing Process

Recently, we added two new CNC (computer numerical control) machining centers and other automated specialized machinery to our manufacturing facility to improve our throughput and allow us to continue to offer low cost, high value products.

We constantly review our products and our markets for new items to introduce to our customers, and to make sure that we have the most complete offering in each one of our product categories.

Strong Employee Base

Now being run by a second generation of Thomeczeks, Northwestern has kept the "family atmosphere" alive within our employees, evidenced by our employee retention rate. A third of our employees have over 20 years with the company.

Reasons for Our Success

The years of growth at Northwestern Tools can be attributed to our original philosophy:

  • Offer excellent quality products
  • Produce products with American labor and American parts
  • Offer at a reasonable price
  • Sell directly and through a national network of industrial distributors
  • Deliver promptly
  • Ship the same day - achieved on 99% of all orders.

Though the majority of business comes from Northwestern's standard product line, special needs products can be developed to meet customer requirements.

Our story of success is simple. Take an idea, do it very well, mix in a good measure of quality, service, and same day shipping, and you have our commitment to you.