Resources
Put your data, documents and inventory to work.
Alongside my faculty role I take on a small number of consulting engagements for businesses and public bodies: companies with messy operational data, organisations with inventory and tracking problems, and energy or infrastructure projects that want to be good neighbours to the communities around them.
I am a licensed Professional Engineer in Texas. Before academia I worked as a process engineer at AMEC Foster Wheeler and a project engineer at Johnson Controls, and my research covers the same ground: energy and critical-mineral supply chains, optimization and simulation, and RFID and asset tracking.
AI and analytics for operations
Turn scattered data and documents into models and decisions.
- Cleaning up operational data and document stores so they can be analysed
- AI assistants that work on a company's own files and data
- Automating production data acquisition and reporting
- Taking a business beyond Excel and Power BI
- Optimization, simulation and surrogate models for decisions too large to try by hand
Inventory, RFID and tracking
From a first inventory database to RFID across a facility.
- Inventory and production systems: what to track, how often, and what to do with it
- RFID and auto-ID: tag and reader selection, testing and pilots
- GS1 preparation, RAIN RFID standards and retailer supplier mandates
Operations and process improvement
Measure the operation, then improve it.
- Operational benchmarking against peers and against the operation's own best weeks
- Lean and Six Sigma
- Data-driven process improvement, with AI where it earns its place
Energy, environment and community fit
Energy and infrastructure projects that need to work for the people around them.
- Energy system and supply-chain modelling for strategic and operational planning
- Policy planning and impact analysis
- Life-cycle and techno-economic assessment (LCA and TEA)
- Zoning compliance and community engagement: helping companies follow zoning law and listen to the communities around their sites, so new facilities are good neighbours
Assessment and due diligence
An independent read before money is committed.
- Business strategy assessment
- Investment due diligence on energy, materials and operations assets
- Early-stage project assessment, before front-end engineering
Also within my expertise
Facility layout, operation and process design, data-centre planning, and RFID system design. These are engineering work under Texas law, so I discuss them as background and advice here rather than offering them as services.
Get in touch
Consulting enquiries are welcome: erickcjonesjr@gmail.com. A short description of the problem is enough to start.
Looking for the free teaching materials that used to be here? They are on Teaching, with the course each one belongs to. Consulting is personal outside work, separate from my role at UT Arlington.