Ken Iverson, Who Revolutionized the Nation's Steel Industry, Dies at 76

CHARLOTTE, N.C., April 15 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- F. Kenneth Iverson, the man who took a failing nuclear instruments company and turned it into a revolutionary steel manufacturer, died Sunday, April 14, 2002. He was 76.

Under Iverson, Charlotte, N.C.-based Nucor became known worldwide as one of the most daring and innovative manufacturers in any industry. In an industry where a large portion of the work force was unionized, Iverson built Nucor with an entirely non-union workforce, rewarding his workers through generous production bonuses. In an industry in which nearly all steel was made in huge, capital-intensive blast-furnace factories, Iverson decided to have Nucor manufacture steel entirely from relatively small factories using recycled steel scrap. Thus, Nucor sparked the boom in "mini-mills," which now produce more than half of all steel made in the United States. Nucor, meanwhile, has grown to the largest steelmaker (measured by tons) in the United States and the largest individual recycler of any material. Nucor converted scrap into 12.3 million tons of steel in 2001.

"All of us at Nucor are a product of his vision," said Daniel R. DiMicco, Nucor's vice chairman, president and chief executive officer. "The best thing we can do is to continue following that vision."

F. Kenneth Iverson was born September 18, 1925 in Downers Grove, Illinois, a rural town west of Chicago. He served in the U.S. navy from 1943 to 1946, rising to the rank of lieutenant. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical engineering from Cornell University and later he received a master's degree in mechanical engineering at Purdue University. He worked at several companies and was a promising engineer when a phoenix-based conglomerate called nuclear corporation of America hired him in 1962 to run Vulcraft, its new acquisition that made steel joists and steel deck. Over the next three years, as Vulcraft tripled sales and profits, the rest of nuclear corporation was losing money so quickly that the company was headed toward bankruptcy. In 1965, Sam Siegel, a corporate accountant for the company, resigned but sent a telegram to the Board saying he would reconsider if the board named him treasurer and Iverson president. The Board, desperate to save the company, agreed.

Iverson and Siegel, along with a manager from Vulcraft named David Aycock, together would lead Nucor over the next three decades. Iverson almost immediately moved the company to charlotte and jettisoned its money-losing operations to focus on Vulcraft. Iverson soon felt that Vulcraft was vulnerable to changes in the price and supply of steel to make its steel products. Iverson and the board decided the company would make its own steel from a new plant in Darlington, South Carolina, that opened in 1969.

Iverson instilled values at Nucor that became widely imitated in the 1980s and 1990s. These included:

    * Lean corporate staff.  To this day, Nucor has one of the smallest
      headquarter staffs of any fortune 500 company -- about 50 people.
    * Pay based heavily on performance throughout the organization, with the
      top executives having the highest percentage of their pay at risk.
    * No executive dining room, parking spaces, company cars or other
      perquisites.
    * Decentralized leadership.  General managers at Nucor facilities operate
      largely independent of corporate interference.
    * Facilities concentrated in rural areas, to tap the excellent work ethic
      of smaller towns.

As Nucor grew to one of America's most-admired companies, Iverson became a sought-after speaker on topics ranging from employee motivation to how to compete with the Japanese. His self-effacing humor enhanced his popularity. He would tell audiences as much about his mistakes as his accomplishments, saying, "My goal is to make the right decision about 60% of the time."

Some of Iverson's most famous decisions were his bravest. Under his leadership, Nucor created a joint venture with a Japanese Steelmaker at a time when Anti-Japan sentiment was high in the U.S. steel industry. Within a decade of its mid-1980's beginning, that venture, Nucor-Yamato, had become the dominant producer of wide-flange beams for construction in the United States.

Perhaps Iverson's most famous gamble was to adopt a technology in the 1980's that would create sheet steel by casting the steel in 2-inch slabs, much thinner than the standard that existed at the time. A rival company produced an inch-thick report explaining why the technology would never work, but Nucor built a mill in Crawfordsville, Indiana, that succeeded. Now, that technology has been imitated in many plants around the world.

Ken Iverson's legacy to the steel industry will endure for generations to come.

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SOURCE Nucor Corporation
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CONTACT: Nucor Corporation, +1-704-366-7000