KION North America announces senior management changes
Brandon Flexsenhar took over as Vice President, Operations July 6, 2020, succeeding Daniel Schlegel, newly appointed as Vice President of Customer Service. David LaDue took over as Vice President of Sales and Dealer Development on July 31, 2020. He succeeds Mike Gore, who has left the KION Group. KION North America is proud to welcome the new members to its executive team. These executives have a wealth of knowledge in the material handling industry and are expected to add great value to the organization as well as help KION North America exponentially grow.
Jonathan Dawley
“KION North America has long been known for producing durable and efficient lift trucks to tackle the most challenging jobs. As we expand our product offering to serve more and more industries in the North American market and focus on solutions for intralogistics, we aim to ensure the highest quality leadership team is in place to serve our end-user customers, dealers, and employees,” said Jonathan Dawley, President and CEO of KION North America.
Brandon Flexsenhar joins the KION Group, having previously led positive transformations in different organizations and brings with him deep Operations experience with companies such as Caterpillar, Fairbanks Morse Engine, and Putzmeister, Inc. In addition, he gained extensive experience in the areas of Lean Manufacturing, Strategy Deployment, Production, and Material Planning, Continuous Improvement Programs and Supply Chain Management. Brandon Flexsenhar holds a bachelor’s degree from Purdue University and an MBA from the University of Wisconsin.
Daniel Schlegel has been with the KION Group for 18 years, including service at Linde Hydraulics, Linde Material Handling, and KION North America. As the Vice President, Operations, Daniel was responsible for KION North America’s factory operations with departmental responsibilities including health, safety & environment, manufacturing, supply chain management, logistics, quality control, and truck order administration. In his new role as Vice President of Customer Service, Daniel will be working in a new commercially oriented, customer-focused role. Schlegel holds an engineering and business administration degree from West Saxon University of Applied Sciences in Germany.
David LaDue joins the KION Group from Hyster-Yale Group, Inc. and its subsidiaries, where he was appointed Vice President, Dealer Sales from 2018-2020. Between 2008 and 2020, David was responsible for continuously exceeding market share and profitability goals while gaining many years of dealer management experience, including various senior sales and strategic leadership positions while at Hyster-Yale Group, Inc. David LaDue earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing with an emphasis on Management from the Indiana State University, School of Business.
“We are excited to announce the addition of two new team members and the promotion of another. We believe that these leaders bring best in class capability to their areas of expertise and are aligned with the values of the KION Group,” said Dawley.
In addition to enhancing the leadership team, KION North America is focusing on sales execution and sales enablement with the creation of its new Business and Sales Development team. The sales execution team are planned to comprise of three Regional Sales Directors. Under these Regional Sales Directors shall be a team of counterbalanced and warehouse sales specialists focusing on consulting and selling activities. The sales enablement team are planned to include the Product Management, Sales Training, Marketing, Sales Development, Sales Operations, Advanced Applications and Business Intelligence departments. Together, these groups are tasked with focusing on streamlining processes and strategies to provide a high level of support to KION North America’s dealers and customers.
