Get the app — iOSThe OEM Family Tree
Almost every nameplate you'll find on a job traces back to one of six companies. Tap any company below for its full timeline — where it was founded, every acquisition since, and where the union fits in. Plus the independent companies that never got absorbed at all.
KONE has agreed to acquire TK Elevator
Announced April 29, 2026: KONE will acquire TK Elevator in a cash-and-stock deal valued at €29.4 billion ($34.4 billion), which would make the combined company the world's largest elevator & escalator manufacturer. ThyssenKrupp — which holds a 16.2% stake in TKE — stands to receive up to €3.4 billion. KONE's shareholders approved the transaction on June 3, 2026, but it still needs clearance from antitrust regulators in multiple jurisdictions; rival Schindler has said it will formally challenge the deal. KONE doesn't expect the earliest possible closing before Q2 2027.
Read the full story in Counterweight's launch issue →The "big six" full-line manufacturers
Otis, KONE, Schindler, TK Elevator, Mitsubishi Electric, and Fujitec build the large majority of the elevators and escalators in service across North America — whether under their own name or a heritage brand they absorbed.
Otis
Founded 1853 · Yonkers, New York, USA
Independent public company — NYSE: OTISIUEC-represented
Founded by Elisha Otis as the Union Elevator Works. Became a subsidiary of United Technologies Corporation in 1976, then spun back out as an independent, separately-traded public company on April 3, 2020.
Otis
Founded 1853 · Yonkers, New York, USA
KONE
Founded 1910 · Helsinki, Finland
Independent public companyIUEC-representedAgreed to acquire TK Elevator (pending)
Built its footprint largely through acquisition: Westinghouse's European business (1974), Armor Elevator's U.S. arm (1982), and Montgomery Elevator (1985–94). Now in the process of acquiring TK Elevator — a deal that would make it the largest company in the industry.
KONE
Founded 1910 · Helsinki, Finland
Schindler
Founded 1874 · Lucerne, Switzerland
Independent public companyIUEC-represented
Founded as a mechanical workshop by Robert Schindler and Eduard Villiger. Entered North America by acquiring Haughton Elevator (1979) and Westinghouse's North American business (1989), forming Schindler Elevator Corporation.
Schindler
Founded 1874 · Lucerne, Switzerland
TK Elevator (formerly ThyssenKrupp Elevator)
Predecessor roots 1868 · Hamburg & Stuttgart, Germany
Privately heldIUEC-representedBeing acquired by KONE (pending)
Traces back to 1860s–70s German lift makers absorbed by the Thyssen industrial group. Sold by ThyssenKrupp to a private-equity consortium in 2020 and renamed TK Elevator. Now the subject of KONE's pending acquisition offer.
TK Elevator (formerly ThyssenKrupp Elevator)
Predecessor roots 1868 · Hamburg & Stuttgart, Germany
Mitsubishi Electric
Founded 1921 · Kobe, Japan
Division of a public conglomerateIUEC-represented (U.S. only)
Elevator & escalator manufacturing has been part of Mitsubishi Electric since 1931. No major North American heritage-brand acquisitions — grew organically as a division of the parent conglomerate.
Mitsubishi Electric
Founded 1921 · Kobe, Japan
Fujitec
Founded 1948 · Osaka, Japan
Independent public companyIUEC-represented (U.S. only)Pending take-private by EQT (as of writing)
Founded by Shotaro Uchiyama as Fuji Transportation Engineering and Manufacturing Co. The only one of the six not part of a larger conglomerate — though private equity firm EQT is in the process of taking it private.
Fujitec
Founded 1948 · Osaka, JapanWho's in the union
The honest answer to "when did each company become union" isn't six clean dates — it happened piecemeal, company by company, over more than a century. Here's what's actually documented.
In the U.S., six companies share one agreement, not six separate dates
Rather than each OEM having its own distinct union history, IUEC mechanics at every major manufacturer's U.S. operations are covered by the same National Elevator Bargaining Association (NEBA) agreement — currently the 2022–2027 contract, and explicitly a U.S. body (it operates under the U.S. Labor-Management Relations Act and funds a U.S. federal/state/local political action committee). Most of that coverage traces back to predecessor companies (Haughton, Westinghouse, Montgomery, Armor, U.S. Elevator, Dover) that were already IUEC shops decades before the OEMs above acquired them — which is why there's no single clean "unionization date" per OEM to point to.
Current NEBA signatory employers: Otis, KONE, Schindler, TK Elevator, Mitsubishi Electric (U.S.), Fujitec America, and the independent (non-OEM) company North American Elevator.
Canada isn't a branch of the U.S. structure — it's a different body entirely
NEBA has no Canadian counterpart as a single national contract; Canadian labour law is provincial jurisdiction, not federal, so there's no equivalent of the U.S. National Labor Relations Act to bargain under nationwide. Instead, NEEA (National Elevator and Escalator Association — the same trade body already covered on the Industry Associations guide for codes and standards) is designated under provincial labour law as the employer bargaining agent, and negotiates separate provincial agreements with the relevant IUEC local — BC's Local 82, Ontario's Locals 50/90/96, Nova Scotia's Local 125, and others — rather than one Canada-wide contract.
NEEA's member companies: Otis, KONE, Schindler, TK Elevator — the "big four," not the big six. That's why those four are tagged simply "IUEC-represented" above, while Mitsubishi Electric and Fujitec are tagged "IUEC-represented (U.S. only)": neither appears in any NEEA agreement found for this guide. Fujitec does have real Canadian operations (a Toronto office since 1992), but whether or how its Canadian workforce is unionized isn't confirmed by any source checked here — worth a direct question to the company rather than a guess.
Not every company was always inside that structure. Richmond Elevator — BC's largest independent — stayed outside it for 50 years until IUEC Local 82 organized it in 2024, and still doesn't have a first contract.
Read that story →Independent & regional companies
Not everything traces back to one of the six family trees above. These companies were never absorbed into a big-six OEM — some stayed independent by choice, some got big enough that nobody needed to sell.
Richmond Elevator
1974 · Richmond, BCFounded by Walter and Irene Zachata; now a third-generation, family-owned operation and the largest independent elevator company in Canada, with more installations in BC than any other single company.
Unionized 2024 — no first contract yet Read Counterweight's story on the IUEC Local 82 dispute →Delta Elevator
1967 · Kitchener, ONPrivately owned and fully integrated — one of the few Canadian companies that engineers, manufactures, installs, and services its own equipment rather than reselling an OEM's line.
Cambridge Elevating
1988 · Cambridge, ONManufactures, installs, and maintains residential and small commercial elevators and home lifts — a different market segment than the big-six OEMs mostly compete in.
Savaria (incl. Savaria Concord)
1979 · Laval, QCPublic company (TSX: SIS) focused on accessibility — stairlifts, home elevators, platform lifts, patient-care equipment. Acquired Concord Elevator in 2005, forming Savaria Concord; itself a consolidator of smaller accessibility manufacturers rather than a big-six target.
Nouveau Elevator
1987 · USAOne of the largest family-owned vertical-transportation companies in the U.S., still independent — a reminder that "family-owned and never acquired" still exists at real scale outside the big six.
Worth knowing
The nameplate isn't proof of who supports it now
Equipment carrying a "Dover," "Montgomery," "Haughton," or "Westinghouse" nameplate is often decades old and now technically supported under TK Elevator, KONE, or Schindler respectively — not the name cast into the metal.
"Armor Elevator" split two ways
Armor's U.S. operations went to KONE in 1982; its Canadian operations ended up with Schindler in the same era. Same original name, two different current owners depending on the equipment's country of origin.
If the KONE–TKE deal closes, "the big six" becomes five
This would be the largest consolidation the industry has seen in decades — and it's still an if, not a when. Schindler has signalled a formal antitrust challenge, and KONE itself isn't projecting a close before Q2 2027.
Looking for how the code books relate instead of the manufacturers? The A17 Family Tree maps A17.1, CSA B44, and the rest of the code family.
See the code family tree →Working on equipment from one of these brands?
Escalator Field Command's Field Guide covers the code requirements every manufacturer's equipment has to meet — searchable, offline, on the job.
