Douglas Machinist Receives High Honor
Shane Aukrust first identified Winona, MN as a place where he would like to live. In search of a machining job in the area, it then didn’t take long for him to find Douglas Machining Services.
Shane found the Compass Precision operating company on Craig’s List. Within two months of a phone conversation and in-person meeting, Shane started as a machinist at Douglas.
About seven and a half years later, Compass has named Shane its Employee of the Month for November 2024.
Shane Aukrust is the 56th employee of the month at Compass since the company began the award in March 2020. He is also the eighth employee of the month at Douglas, including third this year. The most recent recipient of the honor was Aaron Nelson in July 2024.
”We are always pleased to have one of our employees recognized,” said Ben Kubis, one of Douglas’s two co-general managers. “I am happy for Shane.”
“We make a copy of each announcement when a Douglas employee gets to be Employee of the Month and put it on the lunchroom bulletin board,” added Christina Douglas, the company’s other co-general manager. “The board is completely covered with these announcements.”
After graduating from Brainerd Staples with a 2-year vocational degree, Shane immediately jumped into machining in 1994. Early in his career, he worked for tool and die and mold making shops in New Ulm, MN.
In 2003, Shane branched out, as he began working at Hydratight. For that company, he traveled around the country with portable machining equipment to work on immovable machinery at power plants and other manufacturing facilities.
Shane worked in that position for more than 13 years. While still in that role, Shane determined Winona as an area he wished to move to. That led him to the opportunity at Douglas.
Since April 2017, he has served as a machinist at Douglas. He has remained one of the company’s most dependable workers through the Compass acquisition and the management transition from owner Dan Douglas to Christina and Ben.
Shane gave multiple reasons when asked why he enjoys working at Douglas.
“It’s worked out pretty good with my location and the shop and everything and the people I work with,” said Shane. “It’s all around a pretty good atmosphere too.”
On a day-to-day basis, Shane runs the CNC mills at the Compass operating company. He also performs repair work and maintenance.
Shane described the shop as “very busy” this fall. That’s because Douglas Machining is gaining new customer bases regularly.
Over the next several months, Shane has the same goal he has had since starting at Douglas.
“I always want to continue learning when the opportunity arises,” said Shane.
Originally from New Ulm, a city in southern Minnesota about 160 miles from Winona, Shane rides motorcycles in his free time. He enjoys working on his bike as well, as long as it’s for an improvement rather than a repair, but he prefers riding.
Shane also owns half a dozen retro cars that he tinkers with in his garage. The cars he works on are a wide variety of vehicles that were manufactured between 1957-87.