Rich has over 40 years in manufacturing in the several industries. Thy include plastics packaging for the food and medical plastics molding industries. He also has experience in the chemical industry in cosmetics and hair and skin care products and the oil and gas. He has held positions in engineering, production, plant and general management. His experience in plastics is with polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene and polyvinyl chloride plastics. Those processes include blown and cast film extrusion, printing, metallizing, thermoforming, coating and blending. His chemical experience includes hot and cold blending and packaging in tube, bottle and jar with automated filling equipment. He also has experience with the blending and packaging of hazardous chemicals. His areas of expertise include engineering and operations management, material and inventory control, organizational behavior, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system implementation and plant methodologies such as lean manufacturing, 5S, total predictive maintenance (TPM), statistical process control (SPC) and ISO.
Rich has an undergraduate degree from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in Mathematics and Electrical Engineering. He has an MBA from the Simon School of Business, University of Rochester. His professional Affiliations include the Society of Plastics Engineers, United Quality Management Institute and Beta Gamma Sigma. He has served on the board of directors of several local nonprofit organizations.