Gray Quality Manager Earns High Honor
In another month, Gray Manufacturing Quality Manager Luke Honbarger will celebrate his four-year anniversary with the Compass Precision operating company. But Luke and Gray will begin celebrating early.
That’s because for April 2025, Compass has named Luke its Employee of the Month.
”“Luke Honbarger absolutely deserves this honor,” explained Evan Grose, Luke’s boss and Gray’s VP & GM. “He totally handles the quality side of our company, and increasingly, a whole lot more.”
“Give me a few guys like Luke,” added Compass CEO Gary Holcomb, “And there isn’t anything we can’t do.”
Luke is the 10th recipient of the Compass employee of the month honor at Gray. CNC machinist Matt Searcy was the most recent Gray winner of the award in Sept. 2024.
The Gray quality manager is also the 61st Employee of the Month overall at Compass since the company began the honor in March 2020.
Luke is excelling in his role at Gray, particularly for an engineer in his first quality manager role. Luke began his tenure in the operating company’s quality department but quickly assumed a leadership role when previous management gave their notice about three months into Luke’s tenure
“They pretty much came to me and told me to follow around the previous quality manager. They said, ‘Hey, he’s working on a one-month’s notice. We need you to learn everything you possibly can in the one month he’s here and keep the ball rolling until we can find a replacement.’”
Luke Honbarger held down the role until Gray filled the position with a replacement. But that replacement didn’t work out, so Luke received the responsibilities of the role on a full-time basis in January 2022.
Two years later, Luke gained even more responsibility. Longtime Gray employee Evan Grose received a promotion to General Manager in January 2024. Luke’s title didn’t change like Evan’s. But Luke has stepped up to essentially be the right-hand man for Evan at Gray.
Luke said he feels his responsibilities span beyond the quality department and into the entire shop, helping Evan in whatever means necessary. Luke’s day-to-day work often includes communicating with outside processes and suppliers, setting up vendors, and managing shipping, receiving, and assembly.
Of course, Luke also manages the quality department. Gray has thrived in that area the past two-plus years.
“We’ve had some very successful audits very early on with no findings. Kind of went through the school of hard knocks a little bit to learn some of these processes. But I think things have surely turned around and are improving. Luckily, I was handed a very good cookbook to follow to begin with,” said Luke.
Originally from Denver, N.C., Luke graduated from UNC Charlotte with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and a minor in mathematics. He was set to join the workforce early in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic began.
Luke fortunately used a connection he made while working at a restaurant during college to land a role at a chemical plant, where he helped make hand sanitizer. After a year, he bought a property in Denver and found an opportunity at Gray.
Luke called his job at Gray Manufacturing the best one he’s ever had.
“I’m very small-town oriented, so I love the fact that I found somewhere in the town that I grew up in to be able to call home. I like the smaller aspect that Gray has to offer rather than working for a major corporation. You have the ability to stand out more and have more input, more say so and take more charge,” said Luke.
“The people are where it truly comes down to. We have a great team base here. We have a fantastic office manager and a fantastic GM and a really good just overall working team that makes the job easy. Then you mix that in with the customer bases and the parts that we manufacture, it really makes things interesting.
“I also like not doing the same thing every single day. So when we’re making different products, it adds some change to the day. It doesn’t get old.”
Recently, Luke has begun to teach himself how to golf for fun. He also enjoys snowboarding, off roading and spending time on a lake.
But Luke spends most of his free time working on DIY projects around his house. He is currently working on building a car workshop next to his home.