Dustin Jones Joins Compass Operating Company
CHARLOTTE, NC – September 24, 2024 – The leaders at Compass Precision searched for candidates to replace former Quality Products & Machine President Kevin Farmer for nearly a year. Finally, the company has found the perfect fit in Dustin Jones.
The wait was worthwhile. Not only was Dustin a wonderful choice for Compass, he said he feels right at home in his new position.
“It’s very similar to Heico, which is a really big organization that owns 70 companies,” said Dustin. “But you operate independently and you have the opportunity to collaborate and kind of chase goals together, which is nice.
“Compass really felt like home in that aspect.”
Quality Products officially named Dustin as its new Vice President & General Manager on his first day of work on September 9. He brings about a decade’s worth of experience to the operating company.
”We are really excited to have Dustin join us,” stated Compass Vice President & COO Bill Canning. “He has the right combination of talent, expertise, and ambition to really make a difference at Quality Products.
“Bill and I searched for a long time to find a candidate as qualified as Dustin,” added CEO Gary Holcomb. “We are grateful that Bill did double duty for a while, filling in for this open position as well as his regular job. Now with Dustin in the fold, Compass and Quality Products are ready to rock and roll.”
Dustin used his first two weeks at Quality Products to establish new processes. His first big goal at the operating company, though, is to change the basic philosophy of its leadership team.
Dustin wants data to drive all business aspects at Quality Products.
“The biggest goal I’ve kind of set and started pushing toward with the leadership team is really being a data driven organization,” said Dustin. “Looking at the data, looking at our backlogs, looking at how we are performing and making our decisions based on data.
“Then whatever goals we set, we’re driving it every day and we’re looking at how we’re improving or how we may not be improving and then address the issues.”
It’s not surprising that Dustin is going to let numbers help him make decisions at Quality Products. He comes from an engineering background, graduating with a mechanical engineering degree from UNC Charlotte.
His first taste of machining came just after high school through a tool and die apprenticeship program with Apprenticeship Catawba through Technibilt (now Wanzl North America). Dustin said that at that time, he fell in love with machining, describing himself as “a kid at a candy store.”
From there, Dustin entered the machining field on a full-time basis first with Siemens Energy as an engineering leader. After three years, he then transitioned to The Heico Companies.
At Heico, Dustin experienced what it will be like working for Quality Products and Compass on a bigger scale. While Compass doesn’t have anywhere near 70 operating companies like Heico does, both companies have established shops that work autonomously on a day-to-day basis with some opportunity for collaboration.
That’s why Dustin described feeling right at home already at Quality Products. The industries Quality Products serves, including his expertise areas of power generation and aerospace & defense, and the product the operating company creates, were other major draws for Dustin.
“Once I interviewed at QP, seeing the product,” said Dustin. “The type of work. The fact that we did both fab and machining too was pretty important to me.”
Compass Precision was founded in 2019 based upon the simultaneous purchase of three precision CNC machining companies in North Carolina – Advanced Machining & Tooling (Salisbury, NC); Quality Products & Machine (Charlotte, NC); and Tri-Tec Industries (Charlotte, NC). Compass added Gray Manufacturing Technologies (Denver, NC) to the fold in August 2020, then acquired Douglas Machining Services (Winona, MN) in March 2021.
Since then, Compass has purchased R&D Machine (Oldsmar, FL) in April 2022; Strom Manufacturing (North Plains, OR) in July 2022; and Bergeron Machine (Westford, MA) in April 2023, bringing its number of operating companies to eight.
For more information about Quality Products & Machine and Compass Precision, please contact Gary Holcomb, Compass CEO at [email protected].