Ralph D. Clements
Ralph D. Clements – Vice President Manufacturing & Engineering
Ralph Clements is Vice President of Manufacturing and Engineering at Imperial Sugar Company. He joined the company out of retirement to use his deep skills to improve a spectrum of essential operations – including corporate environmental affairs, safety, product development, sugar refining, market research, acquisitions and strategic planning.
Clements has a track record of getting simultaneous results in safety, quality, customer satisfaction and cost management – without compromising one for another. He is leading the effort to improve business through sustainable processes, such as Lean Six Sigma, total productive maintenance (TPM), stage gate processes in engineering and performance management.
Before joining Imperial Sugar, Clements was a corporate consultant with a focus on manufacturing improvement. He began his career with Monsanto, where he was vice president of manufacturing and engineering. There, he led a substantial turnaround in which the plant was benchmarked for employee relations, team building and overall business results.
He also held positions with Phillips Fibers and Propex Fibers. At Propex, he increased the productivity of a Mexico plant by a factor of three while improving safety performance.
Clements graduated from Iowa State University with a chemical engineering degree and holds an MBA from Tulane University.