Richard L. Franks, Ph. D.
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EducationDick received a BSEE in 1963 from the University of Washington and an MS and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 1969 and 1970 from the University of California, Berkeley. He is certified by the Goldratt Institute to teach and provide strategic and tactical problem solving. He taught math and physics at the Naval Nuclear Power School from 1963 to 1967. |
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Management Experience
On
joining AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1970, he worked in queuing and traffic
theory including modeling the toll telephone network under overload.
In 1973 he became the supervisor of a group doing fault detection
modeling and algorithms. In 1977 he
became head of a department planning for operation and control of the toll
network under failures and overloads. Since
then he headed several AT&T Bell Labs departments: Analyzing and proposing
improvements for processor based network equipment (circuit switches, packet
switches, transmission equipment and support systems); planning AT&T’s
transmission network architecture; planning for the operation, maintenance, and
system support for operations in AT&T services; planning system support for
AT&T’s Factories’ storerooms and production areas; and providing
algorithmic research, systems engineering, software development, test, and
customer support for two advanced systems doing airline crew and aircraft
scheduling.
After
these assignments, Dick became the Head of the Performance Analysis Department
which provided consulting for AT&T Business Units and their customers in the
areas of network design, and network and system performance prediction and
improvement. During this assignment
Dick led the transition of the Department from one which was 85% research funded
to a consulting organization that was 100% customer funded, while growing
revenues and establishing excellent customer satisfaction.
Consulting Experience
Next
Dick became the Head of the AT&T Executive Consulting Department, where he
provided strategic consulting and problem solving to AT&T and AT&T
Customers’ Executives. This work
included restructuring a sales and marketing organization, evolving a strategic
technology plan for a large corporation, evolving a strategic technology plan
for a communications intensive corporation, setting the strategic direction for
a human resources organization, setting the strategic direction for a leading
software productivity consulting organization, teaching Theory of Constraints
manufacturing management in a major factory, and teaching Theory of Constraints
tactical and strategic problem solving.
On retiring from AT&T Bell Labs, Dick became the Certified Associate of the Goldratt Institute for the north end of California, where he provides services similar to those of his last AT&T position. He has facilitated several workshops in Production improvement; facilitated several implementations of TOC Project Management in large organizations (See Lucent); facilitated divisions of large corporations in improving the achievement of their goals: facilitated a small business to major profit improvement; and led a non-profit to correct its most important problem in order to better achieve its purpose (See Golden Umbrella).