Win-Tech is a Kennesaw, Georgia-based machine shop that specializes in aerospace and defense manufacturing, having already achieved CMMC level two compliance. But its work with the defense industry goes beyond the parts it makes on the shop floor: The veteran-owned shop also hires employees through a program that gives veterans with low-level offenses a chance to expunge their records. The veterans’ court program is just one example of why Win-Tech earned recognition as the Modern Machine Shop 2025 Top Shops Honoree for Human Resources. To learn more about its recruiting efforts, CMMC compliance and more, join Editor-in-Chief Brent Donaldson for a shop tour or read the transcript below.

Transcript

Brent Donaldson 

Welcome to Kennesaw, Georgia, home of Win-Tech, a precision machine shop that's as dedicated to machining as it is its mission.

John Hudson 

Veterans who first time offenders, if they can get into the program, it’s roughly a two year program. It's pretty intense process that they go through, but then when they graduate, their records expunged.

Brent Donaldson 

Inside you'll see how this veteran and female co owned company produces aerospace and defense parts with the security standards to match, including level two CMMC compliance.

Allison Giddens 

We talked to Dennis and said, you know, we want raises, and here's why. And we gave him justification, and Dennis agreed, and he said, “Okay, I'll give you a raise.” And John said, “No, I want Allison to make what I make.” No duh, I go into business with somebody like this, you know.

Brent Donaldson 

But what really sets Win-Tech apart is their award-winning approach to people. Named the 2025 Top Shops Honoree in Human Resources, win tech opens the door for the next generation of machinists and gives second chances through programs like Cobb County's Veterans Treatment Court. Stick with us as we explore the technology, the culture and the leadership that make Win-Tech one of the most distinctive shops we've seen.

John Hudson 

So welcome to Win-Tech. This is the shop floor behind you. Here is what we call the fishbowl. That's where the guys will go in and do all their programming. Well, our shop floor is laid out with our majority of our NCS are up here, as well as our manual machine in the middle of the shop, which you'll see, that's going to be our QC, and then down on the bottom side, that's going to be more of our fab well water jet area up here, we have both horizontal and vertical NC mills.

Brent Donaldson 

And just generally, what, what kind of materials are you guys handling day to day?

John Hudson 

I make a joke. We'll cut anything from acetyl to zinc.

Brent Donaldson 

And the markets that you're serving, the industries that you're serving, primarily defense, aerospace…

John Hudson 

Aerospace, if the customer is willing to pay us to make their parts, we'll be happy to make them that's what it boils down to. Dennis Winslow started a company in 1988 she was probably 13. That's probably the first time I met her, and she came in here to do our website.

Allison Giddens 

I lived next door to Dennis and his wife at the time, I came in 2006 because I was working for big corporation downtown Atlanta, got passed up for promotion. Called my dad crying, said, “I want to quit my job.” He said, “You can't quit your job until you find a new one.” So I called Dennis and said, “I want to come work for you.” And he said, “You don't know what I do.” And so I came in for an interview, and he slid the number across the table from me. It was in that office, and it was 30% less than what I was making. Slid it across, and he said, “I know it's not what you expect, but if you trust me, you could run the place one day.”

John Hudson 

We have a good variety of sizes of machines. This one here is our biggest. I got roughly 56-inch by 86-inch table on that one. So that's my biggest one. I don't have anything currently on it, but a lot of times we'll take and set sheets up there, and we can actually machine the parts out of a whole sheet, and then they're ready to go. Guess the biggest part we've ever made on that is probably about 110 inches long. It was a big plate that went on a table. When I interviewed with Dennis, he's like, “Well, where do you want to be?” I was like, “I want your chair.” And it's funny, because the day we bought the company, Allison and I bought the company, he had actually already cleared out that office in there. And he's like, “All right, come here. I want a picture of this.”

Brent Donaldson 

What year was that? 2020?

John Hudson 

Yeah, we're not the smartest people. We have still in our manual tool shop. I guess we have jig grind capability, ID, grind, OD grind, jig, surface grind, as well as honing.

Brent Donaldson 

Obviously, you guys won the 2025 Top Shops Award in the category of HR and workforce. As far as your hiring strategies go, you have outreach programs to recently incarcerated, obviously, to local tech schools.

John Hudson 

The Veterans Program is very interesting. We have two guys that are going through the veterans program right now that work for us. If they can get into the program. It's roughly a two year program. They have to go to court every week. They have to check in with their mentors. Every week they have assignments that are given to them by the judge, pretty intense process that they go through, but then when they graduate, their their records expunged. I love that program, so that's the reason it's near and dear to my heart.

Allison Giddens 

And a graduation ceremony is life changing.

John Hudson 

Being former military, I can tell you this. You go to you go to basement, you learn all these skills, how to be a soldier, sailor, a Marine. I don't care you learn this, and it's ingrained into you Monday through Friday, or if you're deployed overseas, it's seven days a week. You got someone telling you what to do, when to do it, where to do it, what you're going to wear. I don't think there's enough transition time. They've started getting better with this, transitioning these folks out of the military, because you got to decompress these people. I mean, don't get me wrong, they can function on their own. They can go take care of any business they need that they've been trying to take care of. But what they don't have, is that coming home and being able to dinner interact with all the different realities that hit them in civilian life, so they find themselves doing things that they typically wouldn't have done because they're not They haven't had that time to adapt. This is somewhat of a challenging part, plus one minus two on the slot tolerances and the depths are plus or minus the thou, I think, but cutting all that over that distance and keeping it flat within the fowl that they're wanting, that makes it a makes it a brutal part.

Brent Donaldson 

And you've got to have really rigid fixturing for this right, correct?

John Hudson 

And that's just the end mill work on that alone is crazy. And funny thing is, is they were using a, I don't know, a 50-thou endmill. And he was doing 10-thou cuts. He kept breaking tools. Ten-thou deep, well, he went to 20. And then just started running like clockwork. So instead of taking, you know, most people, oh, take less. No, he took more because his tool got in there and he wasn't having the harmonics build up. So it was actually cutting instead of

Allison Giddens 

We're both involved with the Chattahoochee Technical College, local technical college, and we’ve both been involved with them for years. There's a wonderful professor over there that students really respect, and John's on their like advisory board. I've been on their board of trustees for their foundation. And for years, we kept saying, you know, it's great because the students love that professor, and it's great to have young adults excited about manufacturing, but where do those where does kids come from? You know, the high schools, they're not if they're not teaching manufacturing, where's the pipeline? And so we started pushing and kicking and pitching fits to high school. I would get I would pretty much I got uninvited back to a school board meeting because I wouldn't shut up. And finally, next thing you know now, they're building a what they're calling a Cobb Innovation Technology Academy down the street, and it's going to include a manufacturing pipeline, manufacturing pathway for high school students. I don't know that we sought out some sort of, hey, we're going to try to be the best at HR. I think we just kind of always knew if we can get the right people. I mean, like we've got, we've got a really good management team, Jimmy, Mark and Rose our management team, they're all very different, and they're very good at what they do. They they give a damn. And that's really hard to find, I think, anywhere. And I think if you can find leaders that care. And then I think if you can find people ready to learn and ready to admit when, oops, I messed up this part, and I want to know why, I think that's 80% of the problem, right, I think then you're, you're on the right track to get in somewhere.

Brent Donaldson 

Compliance on the CMMC side. Okay, all right, so, Allison, you've kind of led that effort, yeah. What has it been like, and what did you have to do, especially on the shop floor, to make it happen?

Allison Giddens 

The CMMC piece to us, has been a very tough road, but finding somebody who knew what they were doing was really key in all of this, and the baby steps. I mean, we've been doing this for six, seven years, and just bit by bit, knowing that it wasn't something we needed to okay, we need to gather all this documentation overnight. It was bit by bit. It was figuring out budget wise, okay, if we altered this, would it make our lives easier? Could people, you know, follow the rules easier? If we did it this way? How much is this going to cost us? Do you want to name who helps? Sure, Sentinel Blue. Sentinel Blue. Andy Sauer and his team, phenomenal. So we did not do a traditional gap assessment, because a traditional gap assessment, we felt we were already doing all along, from what I understand out in the marketplace, those are costing anywhere from 20,000 to 50,000 for a small business. So it kind of depends on your environment. We have, you know, some of the small business challenges, I think, you know, in our environment are things like some of these machines, you have an option. You can, you can connect them all to the internet, and then they all, what they say, become in scope, because you've got them on your network.

John Hudson 

She's been asked to speak several different places on this and one of them was pretty cool.

Allison Giddens 

Yeah, we got invited the Pentagon sat down with Under Secretary of Defense to go through some kind of real-life examples of how this would affect us. And I helped to co-write a risk management strategies in small business environment and how it would affect and got told that that was apparently making the rounds at the Pentagon. So it's, it's nice to hear. I get pinged now and then from some friends at the Pentagon now. Now I call them friends, some friends at the Pentagon that say, you know, hey, we're watching your LinkedIn posts. You know, keep up the Small Business speed of the drum.

Brent Donaldson

What would you say to people who are stumbling on videos like this through recommendations on YouTube. How do you talk about what you do and why it matters and why it's important? Like, why should anybody care? Like, what you guys are doing.

John Hudson 

Here, because they get to sleep quietly in their bed and not have to worry about, you know, 99.9% of the population in the United States, they don't have to worry about the government kicking in their door and dragging them off somewhere. That's because of the war fighters. That's because of our our soldiers, our Sailors, Marines, Air Force. You know, that's why, and that's the majority of what we do here goes to support our war fighters.

Allison Giddens 

I think manufacturing in general too. I think you always put it really well that manufacturing is a career for somebody to think about. If you learn how to make a part, how to run a machine, you'll never, ever be looking for a job, you'll always have a skill.

John Hudson 

That's any skilled trade. I don't care if you're an electrician, plumber, if you if you learn a skilled trade, you can go anywhere in this country, in most other countries, and make a living for yourself and your family.

Brent Donaldson 

Hey everybody. Brent Donaldson with Modern Machine Shop here, and if you just watch that video, and you're thinking, “Boy, I'd like my shop to be featured in the view for my shop series,” then just send us an email at shop video, at mmsonline.com, and tell us what sets your shop apart.