In 1983 a management group purchased Whiting Corporation from its former parent. As the financial guy in the group, Jeffrey Kahn, who had come out to Whiting two and a half years earlier, structured the buyout, developed a business model to pitch to the bankers, arranged the financing terms and negotiated the sale.
After good results were achieved by Whiting for the remainder of the 1980s, the early 90s were difficult for heavy industry. In 1994, Kahn assumed Whiting’s presidency, succeeding retiring Raymond Gibson. The organization was quickly restructured to meet the company’s new customer-focused mission statement.
In 2000 the company moved from Harvey, Illinois, where it had been for 107 years, to a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility site sixteen miles away in Monee, Illinois. Prior to the move, Kahn brought in outside expertise to train Whiting personnel in lean manufacturing. He realized that replacing an aging facility was just a small part of the answer, and that many processes also needed to be changed to assure future success.
Kahn’s vision has transformed an old-line crane company and set the standard for US special crane manufacturing.
