Knife River Corp. named Glenn Pladsen vice president and chief excellence officer, effective Jan. 1.
The company is tasking Pladsen with leading core elements of its “Competitive EDGE” strategy for long-term, profitable growth.
According to Knife River, “EDGE” stands for EBITDA margin improvement, discipline, growth and excellence.
In his current role as vice president of support services, Pladsen is directly involved in launching the company’s process improvement teams (PIT crews), the Knife River Training Center and other programs aimed at building a strong team and delivering profitable results. Pladsen’s role is being expanded to help Knife River achieve industry-leading safety performance and excellence across its commercial and operational initiatives.
“We have seen significant early success with our PIT crews and our training and development efforts, and we believe there are considerable opportunities to build on this momentum,” says Brian Gray, president and CEO of Knife River. “This is an exciting time at Knife River. We’re focused on continued growth and success. Glenn is well-respected across our organization and is highly skilled at developing and standardizing best practices for process improvements. There are multiple paths to achieving our strategic goals, and on each of those paths we are focused on excellence and continuous improvement.”
Pladsen joined Knife River in 2007. In addition to serving Knife River as vice president of support services, he led the company’s capital budgeting, safety, environmental and information technology processes.
“We believe Glenn’s combination of deep institutional knowledge and his proven ability to help us innovate will allow us to more quickly and consistently target areas where we can improve our processes,” Gray says. “Whether it is commercial excellence, operational excellence or safety excellence, adding this position to our senior management team puts an emphasis on our drive and determination to reach our goals – for our team members and for our shareholders.”
Related: Knife River reports third-quarter financial results
