Kobelco Names New Product Marketing Manager

George Lumpkins will oversee and provide critical input for the engineering, design and manufacturing of Kobelco's full line of excavators

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Kobelco Construction Machinery USA is pleased to announce the appointment of George Lumpkins as product marketing manager. As an accomplished construction equipment sales, service, engineering and product development professional, Lumpkins brings to Kobelco more than 40 years of industry experience.

In his new role, Lumpkins will oversee and provide critical input for the engineering, design and manufacturing of Kobelco’s full line of excavators in the 3,000- to 180,000-lb. classes for the North American market. He will also spearhead dealer product and service training and manage the company’s service department. Lumpkins will work closely with authorized Kobelco dealers to help ensure delivery of Kobelco’s promise of total customer satisfaction.

Though new to this position, Lumpkins is not unfamiliar with the Kobelco brand. Over a 17 year period earlier in his career, he served as a product and service manager, sales application engineer, then as a sales and service training manager for the company. While serving in these positions, he logged 59 trips to Japan to learn about and help develop many of the technologies found in today’s Kobelco excavators. Following Kobelco’s joint venture agreement with Kobe Steel and Case New Holland in 2003, Lumpkins transitioned with the company into an excavator product specialist role under Case New Holland and took on the responsibilities of dealer sales training and product evaluation engineering.

Outside of his work with Kobelco, Lumpkins has a history of senior-level management positions with companies such as Bucyrus-Erie, Mitsubishi, MDI Yutani, January Group and LiuGong Construction Machinery. Throughout his career, he’s been entrenched in design and engineering support, as well as product development of excavators and the attachments they support, claiming patents on many of the advancements he’s spearheaded. Additionally, Lumpkins has served on design teams for evaluation and development of loaders, motor graders, dozers, skid-steer loaders, articulated haulers and more, but his first love continues to be Kobelco excavators.

Lumpkins’ expertise is critical to Kobelco’s goal of regaining independent market share. “George has a tremendous amount of technical and practical industry experience from which we’ll draw to ensure the successful reentry of the Kobelco brand in the United States and Canada,” said Ron Hargrave, vice president of marketing and sales for Kobelco. “George has been instrumental in helping reestablish the brand and the product line that will be offered to dealers and end user customers. We are delighted to have him back on the Kobelco team.”

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