Keith Wenzel Takes the Reins at Strom
NORTH PLAINS, OR – March 18, 2025 – Compass Precision, LLC, a Charlotte-based manufacturer of customer, close-tolerance metal components for mission-critical applications, announced Tuesday that it has hired Keith Wenzel as its new Vice President & General Manager at Strom Manufacturing, LLC in North Plains, OR.
Keith fills a vacancy that long-time president and previous owner Bill Strom left behind beginning on April 1 of 2023. Over the last 23 months, long-time Strom managers Brian Kedroske, Paul Sonderen and Mike Strom jointly assumed general management responsibilities.
With its new structure, Strom will continue to benefit from the highly complementary skills Brian, Paul and Mike possess. Keith will also be able to provide a fresh perspective in his management role.
The Compass operating company is already benefiting from that fresh perspective.
Keith officially began in his new position at Strom on March 10. In his first week, Strom already scheduled a customer visit with a contact of Keith’s.
The new general manager previously worked a decade at Portland Precision Manufacturing, another Portland-area precision CNC machine shop. After two years with the company, one of the co-owners left for early retirement, which pushed Keith into a management role.
Over the next few years, Keith and the other co-owner grew the net profit percentage of the manufacturing firm from low single digits to about 25% annually.
Keith will use a lot of what he learned at Portland Precision Manufacturing on a daily basis at Strom.
“Here, I feel like I’m going to get to do what I want to do, which is driving the business.”
In between Portland Precision and Strom Manufacturing, Keith worked nine months for TennMax. Keith ran the firm’s captive machine shop that produced metal parts used on proprietary foreign-sourced gaskets that the “mother company” produced and installed. Keith didn’t consider it the right fit and pursued the opportunity with Strom.
But Strom wasn’t the only reason he was interested in the new opportunity. Keith is also looking forward to working with the Compass sister companies.
“I like the idea of the camaraderie of all the other shops to work with and bounce ideas off of if needed,” Keith said. “Also, the Compass idea that we don’t want to do the simple parts, we want to do the hard stuff was attractive. I’ve based my career around that, working with the harder stuff.”
Keith said his top goal at Strom is to fulfill the vision Compass CEO Gary Holcomb and COO Bill Canning have for the operating company. Over time, Keith would also like to expand the equipment set at Strom.
“One of the things we liked about Keith was his entrepreneurial spirit,” commented Gary. “His desire to grow Strom by adding more customers and equipment fits in well with us. But at the same time, he is already showing his skills in working with our other shops to serve customers in ways that Strom can’t by itself today.”
Strom Manufacturing is one of eight operating companies under the Compass umbrella. Four of these companies are situated in the greater Charlotte area, which is also the company’s headquarters.
The Compass operating model has proven highly effective in integrating and supporting geographically dispersed operating units. In particular, Compass believes that numerous cross-selling and cross-sourcing opportunities exist to enable each operating company to succeed in ways not possible by itself.