Gray Manufacturing Names Evan Grose to Top Position
Denver, NC – July 23, 2024 – It’s official. The Compass Precision operating company located in Denver, NC has a new general manager.
Gray Manufacturing Technologies, a leading supplier in 5-axis machining high-quality products for the aerospace & defense, space and medical markets, officially announced Tuesday it has promoted Evan Grose to general manager.
“Evan has absolutely earned this promotion,” exclaimed Compass CEO Gary Holcomb. “He has been the motivating force behind Gray’s growth and success from the moment we acquired the company four years ago.”
“I’m grateful for the opportunity, and I’m going to do my very best to not disappoint,” said Evan. “At the end of the day, I hope I do [Gary and the Compass team] proud.”
This is the third promotion Evan has received since his Gray tenure began in 2015. He started at the company as manufacturing engineer and also served as quality engineer before assuming his latest position of operations manager in 2021.
Furthermore, Evan is third for Gray, which opened in 2013, in longest total employment.
Although his promotion just became official, Evan has been serving as Gray’s leader since the beginning of 2024 when the company’s previous general manager departed. Even before that, Evan was a leader at Gray as a teacher and mentor for the company’s machine operators.
Now as Gray’s general manager, Evan is preaching a “family first” culture and an empowerment philosophy where he offers support but doesn’t micromanage his employees.
As a result, Evan has earned even more respect, which he already had a lot of, from the other Gray managers and machinists. The Gray team expressed elation when Evan received his promotion.
Evan truly values the working and personal relationship he has with everyone that works at Gray.
“Leaders lead people. You can’t run to a machine and expect it to make a part. It doesn’t have any clue how to do that,” Evan said. “So, a good steward of any company, in my mind, has to be a leader of people. Leadership is about people. You have to know what makes them tick, what inspires them. You have to genuinely care about them.
“I’m a firm believer that if you take care of your guys, the rest of the pieces of the puzzle will fall into place.”
Evan is also great at building relationships with other Compass operating companies. Gray has supported efforts from Quality Products & Machine with a couple different projects during 2024.
“Evan is often the guy I call upon to help out at our other shops,” stated Bill Canning, Evan’s boss and Compass’s VP & COO. “He has never disappointed me. And I doubt he ever will.”
When Compass awarded Evan its Employee of the Month honor in February 2021, he proclaimed himself a “student of knowledge.” Evan loves being in other shops, especially when given the opportunity to see a real behind-the-scenes look. Compass offers that with its operating companies across the country.
The last piece of the puzzle Evan is putting together in his new position is the business aspect of running a manufacturing company.
Before his promotion, Evan said his goal throughout his career had always been to simply “make the part.” Now, he’s striving to “make the part” while “turning a profit.”
“You go from learning what makes the people tick, which is really your most important asset, to, ‘Ok, well how do you get the people’s ticking to tick in time with the company? How do you make sure you’re utilizing them to the best of their abilities and in the best ways to make the company profitable?’”
During the first half of the year under Evan’s leadership, Gray has increased its sales and profitability despite working zero weekend hours and losing its second shift. That’s because Evan and his team have grown smarter at using Gray’s automation and lights-out capabilities.
Evan identified the company reaching a near-perfect record in on-time delivery as his top goal. He added that it’s premature to name any other goals, but he mentioned scheduling and re-building the company’s second shift as other objectives.
Evan made it clear that as long as he’s at Gray, the company will not rest on its laurels. And Evan could be at the company for a very long time.
“It will take someone telling me to finally leave before I leave,” he said. “I’m committed to being a lifer at Gray.