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Robert N. Lane, president and chief executive officer of Ideal Industries, is retiring from the company as part of an arranged succession strategy.
Feb. 29, 2008
3 min read

Ideal Industries Inc. (Sycamore, Ill.) Robert N. Lane, president and chief executive officer, is retiring from the company as part of an arranged succession strategy. Dave Juday, Ideal’s chairman of the board, will assume CEO responsibilities until an ongoing search process for a new CEO is finalized. Lane joined Ideal in 1997 as president before being named CEO in 2000. He is credited with spearheading several acquisitions for Ideal, both domestically and internationally, including Anderson Power Products (2000), WaveTek (2001), Casella Measurement (2006), Trend Communications (2004) and the SureTest testing line (2000). Lane helped to reduce redundancy throughout the enterprise and strengthened Ideal’s goal of individual divisions operated as stand-alone business units. Lane came to Ideal from Ready Metal Industries, a Chicago manufacturer of retail displays where he served as CEO.

Advance, a division of Philips Electronics North America (Rosemont, Ill.): Pieter de Haan has been appointed CEO of Advance. De Haan succeeds retiring CEO Brian Dundon. De Haan brings an extensive background in the lighting arena to the position of CEO at Advance. Since first joining the Philips Lighting organization in 1982, de Haan has held successive roles throughout Philips Lighting in Europe and Asia. Prior to his appointment to CEO of Advance, de Haan served as CEO of Philips Lighting East Asia, based in Shanghai. Dundon was CEO of Advance from 2002 to 2007.

Greenlee, a Textron Co. (Rockford, Ill.): Tim VanDeraa recently rejoined the company in the professional tool category as the director of North American sales — Electrical Distribution. VanDeraa will be responsible for directing the sales effort and achieving the business goals of the Greenlee electrical distribution sales organization. His direct reports will be the regional sales managers and the electrical distribution associated national account managers. VanDeraa returns to Greenlee from the Rayovac Corp. where he was national sales manager/director of Electrical-Industrial Group in Madison, Wis. VanDeraa was previously the territory manager for Greenlee’s Central region and progressed to the level of national accounts manager in 2002. VanDeraa had initially joined Greenlee in March 1997.

Philips Solid-State Lighting Solutions (Burlington, Mass.): The new entity formed by Philips’ acquisition of Color Kinetics promoted Keith Gillum to director of sales, West region. In this role, he will oversee the direct sales team and network of manufacturer’s representatives, dealers and distributors in the western region of North America. Gillum previously served as director of entertainment sales, during which time he managed the company’s sales programs for entertainment dealer and rental companies. Gillum joined Color Kinetics in 2004 and has worked on many high-profile projects during his tenure, including the Hollywood Bowl, the set of Deal or No Deal, the LAX Gateway at Los Angeles International Airport, and Super Bowls XLI and XLII. His prior industry experience includes senior sales roles at Osram and Strand Lighting.