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The 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.

Read this first. Corporate ownership changes. This is sourced from company histories, SEC filings, press releases, and industry press, verified at the date below, not a substitute for checking a manufacturer's own "about us" page for the current picture. Last verified: 26 September 2026.
Pending: not yet closed

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. The U.S. Department of Justice opened an in-depth antitrust review on August 10, 2026, issuing a second request, the formal deep-dive stage that can run a year or more. KONE has said it expects to divest some assets to win clearance. KONE doesn't expect the earliest possible closing before Q2 2027.

Read the full story in Counterweight's launch issue →
The names on nameplates today

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: OTIS)IUEC-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.

Tap to see the full timeline ↓
1852Elisha Otis invents the safety elevator, a brake that stops the car if the hoist rope breaks.
1853Founds the Union Elevator Works (later Otis Brothers & Co.) in Yonkers, New York.
1854Elisha's famous public demonstration at the New York Crystal Palace exhibition, cutting the hoist rope to prove the safety brake works.
1857Installs the first passenger safety elevator in New York City.
1867After Elisha's death, sons Charles and Norton Otis rename the company Otis Brothers & Co.
1878Introduces a roped hydraulic elevator that raises speeds to 244 m (800 ft) a minute.
1889First direct-connected electric elevator; also installs the elevators in the newly built Eiffel Tower.
1900Exhibits an escalator at the Paris Exposition, working with inventor Charles Seeberger, who coined the word "escalator."
1903–04Introduces the gearless-traction electric elevator, a design still fundamentally in use today.
1911–1522 escalators installed across the London Underground.
1976Becomes a subsidiary of United Technologies Corporation (UTC).
1996Buys the UK's Express Lift of Northampton and merges it with its own Evans Lifts subsidiary as Express Evans, based in Leicester. The Northampton factory closes.
1999Forms LG Otis Elevator in Korea with LG Electronics, with Otis holding 80%. The new company buys the elevator business of LG Industrial Systems.
2020Spun off from UTC (April 3) as an independent, separately-traded public company: Otis Worldwide Corporation (NYSE: OTIS).
2021–22Buys out the remaining 49.99% of Spain's Zardoya Otis for about €1.6 billion (€7 a share, valuing the whole company at €3.3 billion), and delists it in May 2022.
Sources

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 (1981), 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.

Tap to see the full timeline ↓
1910Incorporated in Helsinki (Oct 27) as a machine-repair shop refurbishing Strömberg electric motors; also imports Graham Brothers elevators from Sweden.
1924The Herlin family takes control (still the controlling family today).
1968First acquisition: buys the elevator & escalator business of Sweden's Asea.
1974Buys Westinghouse's entire European elevator business (France & Belgium). Roughly doubles KONE's revenue overnight and brings high-rise expertise KONE lacked.
1970sAcquires Stigler (Spain), CNIM's elevator arm (France), and Orenstein & Koppel (Germany).
1979Acquires Marryat & Scott (UK). Its Kenyan and Ugandan branches keep operating under the Marryat & Scott name until fully absorbed in 2014.
1981Buys Louisville's Armor Elevator, which keeps its name and runs as a KONE subsidiary, making KONE the third-ranked elevator maker in the U.S.
1985Acquires Montgomery Elevator's Canadian division.
1994Acquires the rest of Montgomery Elevator, then the fourth-largest U.S. manufacturer, for $280 million; trades as "Montgomery KONE" until 2000.
2000Montgomery KONE fully rebranded KONE.
2021Buys the service and repair business of Detroit Elevator Company (June 1). Part of a steady drumbeat of smaller, regional acquisitions that gets far less attention than the big heritage-brand buys above.
2026Announces (April 29) it will acquire TK Elevator for €29.4B ($34.4B) cash-and-stock. This would create the world's largest elevator & escalator company. Shareholders approved the deal June 3, 2026; still pending antitrust clearance, with Schindler signalling it will challenge the merger. The U.S. Department of Justice opened an in-depth antitrust review on August 10, 2026, issuing a second request, the formal deep-dive stage that can run a year or more. KONE has said it expects to divest some assets to win clearance. Not expected to close before Q2 2027. Read more →
Sources

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.

Tap to see the full timeline ↓
1874Robert Schindler & Eduard Villiger found Schindler & Villiger, a mechanical workshop in Lucerne making lifting equipment.
1892Builds its first electric, belt-driven elevator.
1901Robert Schindler sells the company to his nephew, Alfred Schindler.
1936Installs its first escalator, in Basel.
1979Acquires Haughton Elevator (Toledo, Ohio), entering the U.S. market as Schindler Haughton Elevator Corporation.
1982Schindler Canada buys Armor Elevator in Canada and sets up its Canadian head office in Pickering, Ontario. Smaller Canadian firms follow, including Abec of Montreal, Beckett's service business, Universal of Ottawa and Western Elevator.
1989Acquires Westinghouse's entire North American elevator & escalator business (roughly $500M in annual sales, ~5,500 employees), merging it with the existing Schindler Haughton and Armor Elevator Canada operations to form Schindler Elevator Corporation. The deal also brought Millar, Westinghouse's independent service arm.
1990–2002Millar runs as its own brand inside Schindler for twelve years before being merged into Schindler Elevator Corporation in 2002. Millar nameplates in the field are Schindler equipment.
1998Acquires Haushahn (Stuttgart, Germany).
1999Acquires 63.64% of Elevadores Atlas S.A. (São Paulo, Brazil).
Sources

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.

Tap to see the full timeline ↓
1868Landgraf und Wimmel (later F. Kehrhahn) founded in Hamburg, Germany.
1876R. Stahl founded in Stuttgart, Germany.
1890These predecessor firms build one of the first paternoster (continuous chain) lifts.
1906Install Germany's first escalator.
1950sThyssen Industrie acquires a stake in the Stuttgart & Hamburg companies.
1965R. Stahl merges with Adolf Zaiser in Stuttgart.
1969R. Stahl Aufzüge GmbH founded, absorbing Aufzugsbau Stahl-Zaiser and Eggers-Kehrhahn.
1976Rheinstahl renamed Thyssen Industrie AG; elevator manufacturing spun into Thyssen Aufzüge GmbH.
1986First step across the Atlantic: buys a stake in Northern Elevator Holdings of Toronto. TK Elevator's own history calls this the foothold from which "the U.S. market gradually begins to open up."
1993Enters the U.S. market, acquiring U.S. Elevator Corporation from Cubic Corporation.
1998Hamburg & Neuhausen plants become thyssenkrupp Aufzugswerke GmbH (elevators) and thyssenkrupp Fahrtreppen GmbH (escalators).
1998–99Acquires Dover Corporation's elevator division for $1.1B, briefly operating it as "Thyssen Dover Elevator."
 Dover was itself built by acquisition, so those nameplates come along too: Shepard Warner (1958, Dover's way into electric elevators), Hunter-Hayes and Reddy Elevator (both 1964), and Canada's Turnbull (1966). All of them trace to TK Elevator today. Dover kept the Rotary Lift automotive business, which never came with the elevator division.
1999Thyssen merges with Krupp to form ThyssenKrupp.
2001North American operations fully renamed ThyssenKrupp Elevator Americas; the Dover name retired.
2011Acquires three independent regional companies within three months: General Elevator Sale and Service Inc. (Florida, September), United Elevator Co. (Philadelphia, October), and Sterling Elevator Services Corp. (Edmonton, Alberta, serving customers since 1992).
2020ThyssenKrupp sells its entire global elevator business (July 31) for €17.2 billion to a consortium led by Advent, Cinven and the RAG foundation (RAG-Stiftung). Singapore's GIC and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority came in alongside them as co-investors.
2021Renamed TK Elevator (February). ThyssenKrupp keeps a minority stake, having put €1.25 billion of the sale price back into the business.
2026KONE announces (April 29) it will acquire TK Elevator for €29.4B ($34.4B) cash-and-stock. ThyssenKrupp, holding a 16.2% stake in TKE at the time of the announcement, stands to receive up to €3.4B. KONE shareholders approved the deal June 3, 2026; still pending multi-jurisdiction antitrust clearance, with Schindler indicating it will challenge the merger. The U.S. Department of Justice opened an in-depth antitrust review on August 10, 2026, issuing a second request, the formal deep-dive stage that can run a year or more. KONE has said it expects to divest some assets to win clearance. Not expected to close before Q2 2027. Read more in Counterweight's launch issue →
Sources

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. It grew organically as a division of the parent conglomerate.

Tap to see the full timeline ↓
1921Mitsubishi Electric Corporation founded (spun out of Mitsubishi Shipbuilding's electrical division), Kobe, Japan.
1931Begins manufacturing elevators and escalators. Maintenance work followed in 1954 and its own new-installation service in 1984.
1935Delivers its first elevators and escalators.
1937Builds a dedicated elevator/escalator factory at its Nagoya Works.
1954Establishes Ryoden Service Co., Ltd. and starts maintaining and repairing Mitsubishi elevators & escalators.
1985Enters the U.S. market as Mitsubishi Electric US, Inc.
1988Delivers the first spiral escalator in the United States, three years after entering the market. The world's first had gone in three years earlier, in Japan, in 1985.
Sources

Fujitec

Founded 1948 · Osaka, Japan
Privately held (EQT)IUEC-represented (U.S. only)

Founded by Shotaro Uchiyama as Fuji Transportation Engineering and Manufacturing Co. Taken private by the Swedish investment firm EQT and delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange in March 2026, which puts it in the same private-equity-owned position as TK Elevator.

Tap to see the full timeline ↓
1948Founded in Osaka as Fuji Transportation Engineering and Manufacturing Co., Ltd., by Shotaro Uchiyama.
1956Installs its first escalator in Japan.
1974Renamed Fujitec Co., Ltd.
1977Enters the U.S. market.
2008Sets up a Tokyo Head Office (February) as a second head office alongside Big Wing, where head-office functions had been brought together in 2006. Big Wing stays; this was not a move.
2025Private equity firm EQT announces a $2.7B tender offer to take Fujitec private. EQT would hold 85%, with the founding family rolling over a 15% stake. Major shareholders Oasis (about 29.6%) and Farallon (about 6.6%) sign agreements to tender their shares.
2026Take-private completes. The tender offer closed in December 2025; shareholders approved the squeeze-out of remaining minority holders on February 20, and Fujitec was delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime Market on March 23, 2026. EQT holds roughly 85%, the founding family the remaining 15%.
Sources
Labour

Who'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.

1901Eleven elevator constructors meet at the Griswold Hotel in Pittsburgh (July 18) and found the National Union of Elevator Constructors.
1903Renamed the International Union of Elevator Constructors (IUEC); granted a charter by the American Federation of Labor in June.
TodayIUEC puts its membership at more than 30,000 across the U.S. and Canada. See the Industry Associations reference for NEBA, NEIEP, and the rest of the labour-side acronyms.

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.

Employer members listed in the 2022–2027 NEBA agreement: Otis, KONE, Schindler, TK Elevator, Mitsubishi Electric (U.S.), Fujitec America, and North American Elevator Service.

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 reference for codes and standards) is designated under provincial labour law as the , 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. Every one of those locals, with contact details, is listed in the Canadian IUEC locals directory.

NEEA's member companies are 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 reference. 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, which calls itself the largest independent in Canada, stayed outside it for 50 years until IUEC Local 82 organized it in 2024. As of September 2026 we haven't confirmed a first contract: the union announced a signatory agreement in June 2026, and no second source has backed it up yet.

Read that story →
Outside the big six

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, BC

Founded by Walter and Irene Zachata; now a third-generation, family-owned operation that calls itself the largest independent elevator company in Canada, with more installations in BC than any other single company.

richmondelevator.ca → IUEC-certified 2024 Read Counterweight's story on the IUEC Local 82 dispute →

Delta Elevator

1967 · Kitchener, ON

Privately 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.

delta-elevator.com →

Cambridge Elevating

1988 · Cambridge, ON

Manufactures, installs, and maintains residential and small commercial elevators and home lifts, a different market segment than the big-six OEMs mostly compete in.

cambridgeelevating.com →

Savaria (incl. Savaria Concord)

1979 · Laval, QC

Public 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.

corp.savaria.com →

Nouveau Elevator

1987 · USA

One 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.

nouveauelevator.com →
One more thing

Worth knowing

The nameplate isn't proof of who supports it now

Equipment carrying a “Dover,” “Montgomery,” “Haughton,” “Westinghouse” or “Millar” nameplate is often decades old and now technically supported under TK Elevator, KONE or Schindler, not the name cast into the metal. The same goes for the older names Dover itself absorbed: “Shepard Warner,” “Hunter-Hayes,” “Reddy” and “Turnbull” all sit under TK Elevator today.

"Armor Elevator" split two ways

Louisville's Armor Elevator went to KONE in 1981 (UPI reported the sale on 10 November 1981). Its Canadian operations ended up with Schindler in 1982. 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, the U.S. Department of Justice opened a second-request review in August 2026, 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 →

Run into a term you didn't recognize on this page? The Glossary covers the trade vocabulary: buffer, sheave, CAT1/CAT5, and more.

See the glossary →
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