Gray Manufacturing Machinist Logan Kenseth Becomes Compass Precision Employee of the Month
Resumes are typically one of the most important things to have when applying for a new job. People make entire careers of analyzing and formatting resumes to help in the application process.
But for Logan Kenseth, a resume didn’t matter when he landed a job at Gray Manufacturing Technologies, LLC in 2016. In fact, Logan didn’t even have one when he walked in the door.
Now more than five years into his tenure, Compass Precision, Gray’s parent company, has named Logan its Employee of the Month for February.
“Logan has been great to work with,” said Gray General Manager Jacob Trahan. “He has a great deal of knowledge when it comes to machining and only wants to grow.”
Logan is the fourth Employee of the Month selected at Gray since Compass acquired the company in Aug. 2020. Donna Campbell was the most recent recipient of the honor from Gray in Oct. 2021.
Logan first visited Gray after hearing from a family friend that the company was looking for machinists. While he didn’t have a resume, Logan remembers that his conversations with management went well. When he contacted then General Manager Jerry Soots again a couple weeks after, Jerry offered him a position.
Almost five and a half years later, Logan is one of Gray’s longest tenured employees. He primarily works on two machines – the Mazak Variaxis i800 5-Axis and the DMG Mori DMU 100 T2 5-Axis. Logan has also become a mentor for the newer machinists on the shop floor.
His favorite thing about the job at Gray is working with space parts. Before joining Gray, Logan was employed at Roush Yates Engines in Nascar for a few years. Logan loves racing, and his dad has worked in a shop for Nascar for decades. But when Logan would visit his dad’s shop as a youth, he says he’d always want to watch the machinists.
“Seeing what they could make out of basically nothing was really cool to me.”
He and the Gray team generate something cool out of almost nothing every day.
First getting into machining after high school, Logan earned an Associates in Applied Science for CNC machining from Central Piedmont Community College. He described the program as extremely hands-on, which gelled well with Logan’s interests.
That interest fits well at Gray too.
“Everybody in here is a very hands-on learning, hands-on doing type of person,” said Logan. “I think we have a really good team here as of right now.”
For fun, Logan enjoys working on cars. He also enters races with his Cadillac CTS-V across the southeast.
Originally from Wisconsin, Logan is a big Green Bay Packers fan. His family moved to North Carolina when he was in second grade.
In October 2020, Logan married his wife Kaitlyn. The couple have two cats – Chester and Louise.