First Employee at Douglas Excels as Co-General Manager
Historic. That might be the one word that best describes many aspects of Ben Kubis’ tenure at Douglas Machining Services.
He holds the distinction of being the longest-tenured employee at the Compass Precision operating company.
After 2024, no one will have worked at Douglas longer. Ben was the first-ever employee at the machine shop.
Now 17 years into his tenure, Ben Kubis is also part of Compass’ first-ever co-general manager team.
Ben first met Dan Douglas, the founder of Douglas Machining, when he was working at Fastenal while taking classes at Minnesota Southeast Tech. After earning his tool and die degree from the tech school, Ben joined Douglas Machining in the fall of 2006.
That was just one year after Dan established the company.
Ben originally planned to pursue a different career other than machining. But because of a waiting list in his original industry of choice, Ben chose to specialize in machining.
“I was actually signed up to go to school for diesel mechanic, and there was a waiting list,” Ben said. “So I just fell into machining.
“It was a growing field. They (school administrators) showed me the machine shop at the school, and I signed up that day. I never looked back.”
He loves the idea of taking a raw bar stock and creating a finished product.
Ben rose from machinist to supervisor over his first 15 years with the company. Then in 2021, Dan began to train Ben, and his daughter, Christina Douglas, to replace him after his retirement.
“He was kind of pushing us into our positions, so we were prepared for it, so it wasn’t such a hard transition when he left,” Ben said. “He included us in stuff that he was taking care of or had us take care of it because we were going to be doing it soon.”
Douglas has continued to excel in the year and a half under the leadership of Ben and Christina. Ben focuses on the operating company’s manufacturing and quality while Christina oversees sales and accounting.
”Ben and Christina make a wonderful pair in terms of running Douglas Machining,” explained their boss Gary Holcomb, Compass’s CEO. “Christina makes the front end of the business go while Ben is all over the back end. We are incredibly blessed to have them doing what they are doing.”
Ben appreciates the backing Compass provides its operating companies. But he also loves that Douglas runs autonomously.
“We run Douglas as our own. It’s not like, every move I make, I have to answer to someone for it or ask permission for it.
“We have the support and the knowledge of other shops and Compass as a whole. But then we have the independence of basically being our own shop.”
Behind that support and work partnership with Christina, Ben will aim to continue making history at Douglas in 2024.