Tri-Tec Office Manager Expanding Role Again
CHARLOTTE – April 29, 2025 – Tri-Tec Industries keeps expanding its business and monthly shipments. Growing right along with the Compass Precision operating company is office manager Kalee Porter.
Kalee celebrated her 3-year anniversary with Tri-Tec this spring. During her three-year tenure, she’s become an intricate part of the company’s operations.
”Kalee is an absolute joy to work with and be around,” explained Rick Loyd, Tri-Tec’s President. “She makes my life so much easier because of everything she does, often without being asked.”
One of the top ways Kalee adds value at Tri-Tec is her ability to contribute everywhere. In previous office manager roles during her career, Kalee has served as a controller or a bookkeeper.
While she performs accounting duties at Tri-Tec, her daily tasks also include placing and taking orders, processing, inventory and data entry.
Kalee’s role has expanded even further during 2025.
“I’m trying to learn more in the shop and help where I can. I think the biggest thing I’ve learned in the past year were customs and procedures and things like that,” Kalee said. “We also do a lot of labeling and certificates of things, so I’m trying to be more proactive with that to help with the production timing.”
Over the past few months, Tri-Tec has shipped more orders to a customer in Germany. Kalee has played an intricate role in ensuring the European orders contain the right parts, have the correct amount of parts and arrive on time.
Some of the orders require daily shipments. Others are for very large quantities, which Tri-Tec keeps in its shop until the order is complete.
“That takes up quite a bit of room in our shop,” Kalee said. “You get to watch it build up, and then once you go through, put all 20 people on the email, get the right coorspendents, delivery dates, and everything.
“Then watching it all go, it’s kind of rewarding.”
Tri-Tec has also begun doing ocean shipments to Germany with these orders rather than aerial shipments. This is a more involved process for Kalee, but she has been up to the challenge.
Kalee has also helped manage Tri-Tec’s new quality system this year. Longtime Tri-Tec employee Brad Howard now also does final inspection at the operating company. To support Brad, Kalee will get his reports after part inspection and pass them along to customers or summarize Brad’s work into a spreadsheet for customers.
This is all part of Tri-Tec’s constant effort to supply all its customers with clear, continuous communication, which is a goal at all of Compass’ operating companies.
Kalee supports Brad, Production Coordinator Dennis Jenkins and other Tri-Tec employees in such a way that the shop can continue to operate smoothly even without a key staff member.
“It’s nice knowing that they are all comfortable enough to come talk to me whether it’s payroll related or something in the shop,” Kalee said. “I’ve been able to grow to the point where I can help the shop manager.
“If he’s not here, I can figure out the parts and where they are and the quantities of what’s going out. Things like that.”
Kalee arrived at Tri-Tec in March 2022 with eight years of office management experience. Just before Tri-Tec, she worked at ASM Industries from 2016-21. She left ASM Industries for the birth of her daughter, Charlotte-Anne, in July 2021.
Kalee began her career at her father’s landscaping company – Wainwright Lawn Care.
Tri-Tec operates from its Charlotte, NC facility at 200 Peachtree Drive South. It provides solutions and quality parts to leading companies in life science, industrial automation, chemical processing and OEM’s across the southeast and globally.
Tri-Tec was founded in 1997. ZP Enterprises, LLC, an Atlanta-based firm, acquired the company in 2016.
In 2019, ZP Enterprises decided to seek new ownership for three of its portfolio companies, including Quality Products & Machine, LLC, and Advanced Machining & Tooling, LLC, as well as Tri-Tec. It quickly reached an agreement with Main Street Capital Holdings, a Pittsburgh-based private equity firm. Main Street acquired Tri-Tec, along with its two sister firms, and placed them under a new umbrella company, Compass Precision, LLC.
Compass has added five new sister companies for Tri-Tec over the past five years.