Ken Lavelle, President, Seal Operations, informed me in December of his plans to retire from Flowserve at the end of March.
Ken began his career with Flowserve in 1979 by joining our heritage company Borg Warner as a Senior Design Engineer. Through the years as his career grew and evolved, Ken has held global leadership roles in Operations, Engineering, Research & Development, and Sales, in both the Seal and Pump businesses.
Throughout his career, Ken has been instrumental in developing transformational capabilities for Flowserve. A few examples are the global Seal Manufacturing Strategy, which resulted in Tlaxcala becoming the largest manufacturing site in Seals; the Seal Engineering Strategy which established the Chennai Engineering Center (CEC) as the largest engineering site in Seals; and the market-leading Seals LifeCycle Advantage (LCA) program. As a Sales Engineer, Ken worked through the early stages of the End User Strategy, signing some of our first distributors. He has always been a proud advocate of putting our customers first, has many long-standing relationships and is well respected across the industry.
Between now and retirement, Ken will work on my leadership team and continue to support the integration of Seal Operations and Services & Solutions Operations into the new AMSS organization. I, along with the entire Flowserve Leadership Team, would like to express our sincere thanks and appreciation to Ken for his leadership, dedication and accomplishments throughout more than 30 years with Flowserve. We hope all of you will join me in congratulating Ken on his accomplished Flowserve career.