Dean Bartles, PhD, FSME, FASME

Chief Executive Officer & President
MTDG - Manufacturing Technology Deployment Group

Dean L. Bartles, Ph.D. is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Manufacturing Technology Deployment Group (“MTDG”) and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (“NCDMM”) as well as Advanced Manufacturing International (“AMI”), both subsidiaries of MTDG. Previously, Dean served as the President of the National Tooling and Machining Association. Prior to that, Dean was the Director of the John Olson Advanced Manufacturing Center at the University of New Hampshire where he designed and built a state-of-the-art advanced manufacturing facility to train students and adult learners and to conduct research. Dean also served as the founding Executive Director of the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute (“DMDII”) in Chicago and Chief Manufacturing Officer of UI LABS where he oversaw the design and build-out of a start-of-the-art digital manufacturing center and recruited over 300 members to join the DMDII consortium.

Dean worked for General Dynamics Corporation for over 30 years setting up and running manufacturing operations in Egypt, Turkey, and the US and prior to that, he worked for Fairchild Republic Company as an Industrial Engineer on the A-10 aircraft program. He recently served as the 2016-2017 President of the North American Manufacturing Research Institute, the 2016 President of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, the founding Chairman of the Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition, and the Chairman of the Board of the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining. Dean graduated from Indiana State University earning a Ph.D. in Technology Management with a concentration in Manufacturing Systems. His dissertation focused on adaptive control for CNC machining.

Dean currently serves on the Board of Directors of the National Institute for Metalworking Skills, as well as the American Society of Mechanical Engineer’s Sector Leadership Team for the Design, Materials, and Manufacturing sector and serves as Chair of the ASME Board of Standards and Testing Task Group on Advanced Manufacturing. Additionally, Dean serves on the Board of Trustees of the MTConnect Institute, the Board of Governors of the Manufacturing Leadership Council within the National Association of Manufacturers and was recently appointed to the National Small Business Association’s Leadership Council. Dean is the current Secretary of the National Defense Industrial Association’s Manufacturing Division and is a Fellow of both the Society of Manufacturing Engineers and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Dean also serves on the Industry Advisory Board for the University of Tennessee College of Engineering as well as the Penn State University Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering.