Dr. Richard J. Titus

Principal and Adjunct Faculty, Titus Consulting and Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA

Dr. Richard Titus started his Lean Six Sigma journey in 1998 as a Wave I Master Black Belt at Ingersoll-Rand. Since then, he has led or participated on seven successful large-scale deployments around the world and worked at more than 70 companies supporting Lean Six Sigma projects. Rich’s broad experience ranges from hands-on leadership of continuous improvement and Lean initiatives in multiple industries to teaching in a variety of academic and corporate environments. These organizations represent a wide range of industries including defense, medical, food, automotive, energy and consumer products with products varying from highly engineered low volume to high volume consumer products. Savings for these organizations exceeds $50+MM.

In addition to his 20 years at Ingersoll-Rand and 15 years as an independent consultant, Rich is an adjunct faculty member in Lehigh University’s Business College. Dr. Titus has taught Manufacturing Operations and Organizational Behavior courses, Design of Experiments, Simulation, Database Design, Applied Statistics, Six Sigma Yellow and Green Belt, Transportation and Logistics and Applied Supply Chain Models courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels.  He earned his Ph.D. at Penn State University in Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering in 2019.   

Pierogies, Paretos and P-Charts

Mrs. T’s Pierogies started in 1952 by Ted Twardzik inspired by mother’s, Mrs. T’s, original recipes. The startup company located in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania has grown to be a recognized national food brand found in grocery stores and markets throughout the country. While overall Mrs. T’s has a dedicated and experienced workforce, staffing the production lines on a day to day basis can be a challenge. This challenge was exasperated by the emergence of the Covid virus and its effects on worker availability, required health and safety protocols and increased demand. A Six Sigma Green Belt certification project was initiated to address attendance and staffing led John G, a senior operations manager. Statistical Process Control (SPC) charts clearly identified special causes were greatly impacting attendance but what were the root causes? Following the DMAIC process John’s team mapped out the process and identified major inputs, outputs, customer and suppliers using the SIPOC high level process map. Next, they created a FMEA focused on staffing issues at line startups. Multi-level Pareto charts were used to identify absence reasons, production areas, personnel, and absence reasons. These reason codes provided great data-driven insights for Mrs. T’s management team. This resulted in policy changes that positively impact absentee levels and operations performance. Mrs. T’s continues the continuous improvement journey as new projects and Six Sigma trained practitioners tackle business issues following the DMAIC process.