Richard C. Email & Phone Number

As Senior Director Process Optimization at Port Townsend, my responsibilities are broad but clear: optimize the process. In this case, "process" refers to industrial manufacturing processes. I am tasked with finding and eliminating waste: wasted energy, raw materials, chemicals, and, to some extent, time. At the foundation of all of this effort is reliable data. I have to obsess over the reliability of data, or the decisions based on that data are suspect. Data must be reliable in at least two ways: availability and believability, One without the other makes decisions based on that data indefensible.My recent work has revolved around data analytics and visualization. Many companies and facilities tend to be data-rich but need help in coalescing disparate data into actionable information. I have learned how to distill down many analytical techniques into a useful few, apply them to the appropriate data sets, and then present the resulting information in a way that is easily accessible and drives stakeholders to good decisions quickly.My 20+ years of experience as an optimization and process control engineer has greatly enhanced my ability to distinguish noise from important subtleties. There are some molehills that should be made into mountains, and having a solid understanding of a process and its goals is imperative in making those distinctions.My IT background is important to me because it helps me have conversations with the people who must necessarily provide and support the hardware and software my work relies on. Having worked as a network and server administrator as well as "shadow IT" administrator, I have experienced the pitfalls of poor communication between engineers and IT. I've also seen the power of aligned goals succeeding for the benefit of the whole.In the end, I'm an engineer, which means I'm a professional problem solver. My training is in chemical engineering, but I've discovered that the principles associated with that field have served me well in helping customers solve many other types of problems. Those principles boil down to integrity in the search for what is true and compassion to suffer alongside others until the problem is solved.

Listed skills include Process Optimization, Process Control, Chemical Engineering, Process Engineering, and 7 others.