About — Richard Owen Rich
I run a plant by day. I build AI into it by habit.
I’m Rich — Director of Production at Portland Bottling Company in Gresham, Oregon. I’m deeply versed in the Toyota Production System, Lean Six Sigma, and TPM, and I build AI for the floor with my own hands. Most AI consultants have never run a shift. I still do.
Toyota Production System · Lean Six Sigma · TPM · AI build
The turn
It started with a report I couldn’t answer.
For years I ran on a daily production report that told me what happened and almost nothing about why — or what to do next. I picked up Power BI to close that gap, and somewhere in the middle of it I started working alongside AI to make sense of the floor.
The tool was never the transformation. Learning to collaborate with it was. I started early — with ChatGPT before it went mainstream — and I’ve spent the time since building the unglamorous parts: agents, automated analytics, SPC, and a lot of experiments in what actually holds up under real operating conditions.
That’s the difference I bring. I didn’t learn AI in a workshop and then go looking for a factory. I learned it on my own floor, against real constraints, with a team that had to actually adopt it.
The rare stack
Operations fluency and hands-on AI — in the same person.
How I work
Be kind. Be right. Be fast. In that order.
Be kind
Adoption is a people problem — first
If the floor doesn’t trust it, it doesn’t matter how good the model is. I lead with the people who have to use it.
Be right
One real problem, measured
A single use case, solved and proven on the floor, beats a transformation roadmap every time.
Be fast
Momentum over committees
Ship something small this month. Reps compound; steering committees don’t.
Off the floor: University of Oregon, and time given to disaster relief, education, and environmental causes — the same instinct that runs the work. Show up, do the useful thing, skip the credit.
More from the floor.
Working notes on getting AI adopted in operations — the systems, the processes, and the people.
Browse the field notes →Portland Bottling Co. · Gresham, Oregon
The Operations Bridge 