Douglas Machining’s Tyler Creeley Becomes Compass Precision Employee of the Month
Douglas Machining CNC programmer Tyler Creeley reached his 5-year anniversary with the Compass Precision operating company early in 2021. His tenure at Douglas is now longer than his time working at the other two companies where he’s been employed.
Months after reaching that milestone, it’s fitting that Compass has named Tyler its Employee of the Month for September.
“Tyler is typical of the type of employee we have at Douglas,” explained Gary Holcomb, CEO of Compass Precision, Douglas’s parent company. “He works hard, wants to learn more, and loves programming complicated equipment. He is our kind of guy!”
Tyler is the second Employee of the Month selected at Douglas since Compass acquired the company in late March. Douglas Machining Supervisor Ben Kubis was the first, becoming Employee of the Month in May.
A Winona, MN native, Tyler started at Douglas Machining Services, LLC as a manual machinist. Then a year into his tenure, he transitioned into the CNC machines. Today, Tyler serves as a CNC programmer and performs maintenance on the machines.
Running the state-of-the-art machinery at Douglas is Tyler’s favorite part about working at the Compass operating company.
“There’s always something new and exciting to kind of program or machine there,” said Tyler. “It definitely keeps you on your toes. It’s not just the same part or washer everyday. Something comes along that seems almost undoable and here we are making thousands of that part.”
Tyler has been working in CNC machining for 12 years. He became interested in the field during high school while taking shop classes featuring manual lathes, mills, welding and fabrication. Tyler said he was influenced by a few friends who entered CNC machining a couple years ahead of him.
He worked with two of those friends early in his career, one of which taught him how to program machines. Tyler served as a CNC machinist at Whetstone Machine prior to another friend introducing him to Douglas Machining in 2016. Before that, he also met company founder Dan Douglas through his family.
Tyler expressed his thankfulness to be able to work for Douglas Machining.
“I wouldn’t have seen myself there [at Douglas], machining these parts that I’m doing now, five years from where I was,” said Tyler.
Living his entire life in Winona, Tyler enjoys working on cars, mountain biking and snowboarding. He also used to race dirt track a lot in his spare time.
Tyler and his partner, Nikki, have two children and four pets — two dogs, a cat and a turtle. Their family welcomed a new baby boy, Porter, in May. The couple also has a three-year-old son, Zeke. The two dogs, Penny and Riggs, are seven and one years old, respectively.
Tyler and Nikki adopted their cat, Rue, around when they started dating nine years ago. Nikki has owned her turtle, Dexter, for 18 years.