Leadership
Randy Rippin – President
Mr. Rippin is primarily responsible for strategic planning, business development, and promoting and maintaining internal and external communications and management for RTR. Mr. Rippin has over 13 years experience in leading a technology business, having formed and participated as a principle managing partner in Regal Decision Systems from 1997 to 2003 and is now an equal partner for RTR Technologies since its inception. Randy Rippin has been in technical and management lead positions for small and medium sized technical consulting firms since 1989 when he became director of the Operations Research division of RAIL Company.
Mr. Rippin has over 30 years experience in managing and participating in computer and information systems and design, software engineering and operations development teams, and concentrating in computerized simulation modeling and analysis. Since October of 1990 he has been working with legacy US Immigration and Naturalization Services, legacy US Customs, General Services Administration, US Dept of Transportation, and now DHS in developing, supporting, and using modeling and simulation to support border management. Mr. Rippin currently provides Subject Matter Expertise in support of DHS USVISIT Office of Facilities Management budget, program, operations, and infrastructure analysis decisions, as they relate to the introduction of new automated inspection methodologies at land, air, and sea ports-of-entry.
Earl Thies - Chief Financial Officer
Earl Thies is responsible for the financial and day-to-day operations at RTR Technologies. Mr. Thies oversees government contracts to insure compliance with Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) regulations.
In addition to his executive duties, Mr. Thies provides technical support of critical contracts. Mr. Thies’ knowledge of border crossing laws, policies, and procedures are combined with technical and management skills obtained in over 22 years of experience on operations research projects. Mr. Thies is working with managers at Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and GSA to identify future applications for simulation and animation modeling. Mr. Thies has specialized in managing software development efforts used to improve operations at U.S. ports-of-entry. As a lead modeler and analyst, Mr. Thies is experienced in applying simulation modeling solutions to improve the capacity of ports-of-entry. Mr. Thies has worked with and presented to high-level policy makers and is an accomplished technical writer.
Mr. Thies worked with design architects and agency representatives from GSA, Customs-Legacy and INS-Legacy in evaluating detailed operating procedures and traffic flow utilizing customized BorderWizard simulation models.
As Program Manager for the Canadian BorderWizard software program, Mr. Thies studied Canadian inspection methodology and lead the development effort for a turnkey simulation and animation program to model land border inspection processes.
Mr. Thies has performed analysis using the SPECTRUM readiness evaluation tools for the U.S. Navy. Models have been formally validated and were in use for 15 years.
Reed Rippin - Chief Operating Officer
Mr. Rippin has worked 30 years in the operations research field and has spent the last 13 years as a part-owner of two small business ventures since 1997.
Mr. Rippin is the Project Manager and lead technical modeler for all tasks under the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Rippin manages a technical team whose mission is to provide expert knowledge of existing simulation modeling and operations research tools for use in analyzing the effects of US-VISIT and CBP policies on current and planned site facilities. Mr. Rippin has performed simulation studies and special analyses, presented findings to DHS management and specified stakeholders, and developed extended and detailed versions of existing simulation models to answer specific What-If questions.
For over 21 years, he has developed and applied discrete-event simulation models to support business process improvement, workflow management, and logistics. Since 1991, he supported Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as lead programmer and Project Manager in the development and support of the Port-of-Entry Management System/Workforce Analysis Model (POMS/WAM). This series of simulation models assists DHS management in predicting the impact that proposed changes to operations and resources will have on services to the public, testing new inspection technology, methodologies, and facility layouts. In addition, Mr. Rippin played an instrumental role in the development and use of the BorderWizard modeling system. He has worked closely with high-level management across DHS in support of their efforts. Prior to his work with the CBP and DHS, Mr. Rippin was involved in programming, data collection and analysis, and discrete event simulation modeling to various programs/tasks supporting Army and Navy operations and readiness.
