Quality Products Vice President Reaches Milestone
CHARLOTTE – September 9, 2025 – Quality Products & Machine, LLC has experienced terrific growth recently. The inception of that growth happened about two years ago.
Then, the Compass Precision operating company really took off in September 2024 when it hired Dustin Jones as vice president and general manager.
Dustin reached his official 1-year anniversary at Quality on Tuesday.
”I personally oversaw Quality for about a year before Dustin arrived,” explained Bill Canning, Compass’s President & COO to whom Dustin reports. “This is a tough job, with a company showing no growth for years. But that has all changed.”
“We asked Bill to take over Quality Products in October 2023, essentially doing two jobs at once,” added Compass CEO Gary Holcomb. “Slowly, things got better. Bill’s efforts paved the way for Dustin.
“I have never before experienced the tremendous short-term performance improvement that Dustin and his team have achieved in the past twelve months.”
Dustin has yet to finish his first full fiscal year at Quality. But the operating company has already broken its monthly revenue record five times this year. Profitability at the company has risen while Quality’s lead times have shrunk practically in half.
To accomplish these significant milestones, Quality has done things such as start a second shift and add more equipment. But the company first started on a road to success with a shift in mindset.
“It’s been a complete culture change and a completely different understanding of how the business could operate,” Dustin said. “When I started, I got some pushback, ‘Oh, we can never hit that revenue. We’ll never be able to get to that level.’
“But after changing that attitude, we’ve been able to set records. It’s not like we made massive changes in personnel or head count additions or anything like that. But it’s a mindset shift in understanding our customer and supporting them in every way possible. What we’re seeing is the result of that.”
To start that shift, Dustin and the Quality Products management team emphasized the fundamentals to the staff every single day. It then took the company about four months to re-organize its staff to get employees “in the right place,” as Dustin put it.
This philosophy has given every individual at the company in 2025 the chance to have the most success.
After establishing that new culture, the Quality team went to work on the mechanics needed for growth. The company has added a second shift and acquired new fabrication equipment this year.
Those things serve the same purpose as the new mindset – better satisfying customer needs.
“It’s really a customer focus,” Dustin said. “Across the board, our company has become, how can we serve our customers?”
“Whether it’s quicker lead times, whether it’s looking at our costs and trying to be as competitive as possible. Fast response times. Available all hours of the day. That’s been our focus.
“Our mindset now is whatever it takes to make our customers successful and make them happy, and that’s driven our entire business. We’ve seen improvements in fabrication and the quoting and those types of things as a result.”
One of the most recent CAPEX investments Quality has made is a new 10 kw fiber optic laser with an automatic loader. Quality made the addition for more capacity and power while increasing production times for one of its biggest customers.
It became the second laser the operating company has added under Dustin’s leadership. All three lasers now operate nearly around the clock. Quality has gone from running one laser about 6-8 hours per day a year ago to operating three lasers for two eight-hour shifts and then 4-6 hours each night, for a total of 22-23 hours per day.
Within the last year, Quality has also added a new Mazak VTC 300 vertical machining center, another roller and a visual inspection system. Similar to the lasers, the roller is filled with jobs “all the time” and works “really well.” The inspection system rapidly inspects sheet metal components in about 25 seconds. It can accommodate big parts because of its 19 and a half foot height.
Quality has also become extremely data driven. Dustin and the other managers use data on a daily basis to make difficult decisions to stay ahead.
With these upgrades, Quality has better served its current customers and added new ones. The company has also fulfilled more customer needs with expansions made to its engineering department.
The transformation over the past year hasn’t always been easy. But the next steps could be even harder.
As the saying goes, it’s harder to stay on top than to reach it.
But Dustin doesn’t sound satisfied after his first year at Quality Products. He’s already got his eyes set on more improvements and new goals.
“We never want to have that mentality of, ‘Oh, well, this is good enough. This is just where we need to stay,’” Dustin said. “We need to say, ‘Ok, how do we go up another 50% and kind of stretch our goals even further.’”
Adding the new equipment will be key to Quality continuing to reach new heights. Dustin said their customers’ needs are growing, so the Compass operating company must keep growing too.
The next equipment acquisitions Dustin sees Quality making are additional cranes, forklifts and other items that will support large and heavy product applications. Quality still satisfies customers who need smaller parts, but over the last year, the operating company has also shifted more toward producing bigger and heavier parts. With that, Quality needs the equipment to move heavier raw materials and finished products.
Dustin also floated the idea of adding another CNC machine in the next 6-12 months. The company is considering the possibility of a mill/turn machine to greatly increase efficiency.
Whatever equipment Quality does add in Dustin’s second year, it’s clear the company will do so with the customers in mind.
”It is so much fun now introducing new customers to Quality Products,” said Jim Miller’ Compass’s VP of Sales. “The expanded equipment base sells itself, and the ability to do difficult fabrication and machining jobs, quickly and right the first time, keeps them coming back. Dustin is the key guy. He’s got Quality rolling, literally and figuratively, and it’s been an amazing transformation.”