Dean Bartles on the Importance of Advanced Manufacturing: Progress and Challenges
In the exploding industry of advanced manufacturing, innovators and researchers constantly push the boundaries of technology to develop, remodel, and improve the processes by which products are designed and manufactured. The most defining aspect of this sector is that it integrates cutting-edge machinery with the already existing processes and systems within manufacturing companies to stay competitive and at the top of the global market. In other words, advanced manufacturing seeks to combine technology and science with manufacturing systems.
Also Read | Meet Jordan Franze, Helping Build Digital Businesses as a True-Blue Young Entrepreneur
One of the world's leading figures in the advanced manufacturing sector today is Dr. Dean Bartles, President and Chief Executive Officer of Manufacturing Technology Deployment Group, Inc. (MTDG), a company well known for its commitment to improving and expanding the technical scopes of the industry in the US.
In a recent interview conducted with Dr. Bartles, we had the opportunity to hear from him about the exciting field of advanced manufacturing and the significant progress that MTDG can accomplish today thanks to the innovative technologies that they integrate into manufacturing systems.
Also Read | American Entrepreneur, Mobeen Mian, at 25: Outspoken, Confident, and a Leader in His City
Dr. Bartles' outstanding experience in the sector started as soon as he graduated from college. With a Ph.D. in Technology Management from Indiana State University, Bartles' career began in the defense technologies industry at the Fairchild Republic Company, where he worked as an Industrial Engineer for five years. He later joined General Dynamics Corporation, aerospace, and defense company, where he mostly secured the design and development of several manufacturing operations in Egypt, Turkey, and the United States. In his 31 years at GDC, Dr. Bartles increased their sales from $135 million to an astounding $600 million, a testament to inventiveness and managerial skills in advanced manufacturing.
After holding several senior positions, namely at the National Tooling and Machinery Association, In 2020, Dr. Bartles became the President and CEO of MTDG, a parent corporation for both the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM) and Advanced Manufacturing International, Inc. (AMI).
In the interview, Dr. Bartles went into detail about the type of work that MTDG is doing right now. In essence, the company's primary goals are to help small-to-medium manufacturers (SMMs) grow and stabilize their sales in the global technologies market, provide valuable work for developing infrastructure in the US, and generally keep innovating in the sector of manufacturing technologies.
Dr. Bartles expressed his particular interest in "additive manufacturing" technologies, also known as 3D printing. He explained that metal additive manufacturing is currently revolutionizing the industry, unlike the everyday use of 3D printing with plastic and products. In his word, "it's an amazing technology where you start with metal dust, and you hit it with a laser, and you can design and form pretty much any shape that your mind can imagine." Additive manufacturing opens up an endless scope of opportunities that can take advanced manufacturing technologies to the highest levels of innovation.
Dr. Bartles also pressed the importance of collecting data from machines and using them to our advantage. Using efficient and low-cost sensor technologies provided by partner companies, this data is translated into predictive analytics that provides valuable information about the critical aspects of machinery such as vibration, heat, system instability, technical failure, etc.
Dr. Bartles also addressed the challenges that the advanced manufacturing industry is facing today. A persistent challenge, in particular, is to create a standard that allows all the machines "to speak in one common language." This is critical in the industry, seeing how delicate and fine-tuned most of the machinery is. Being able to connect everything using one unified standard in the sector would be highly beneficial.
MTConnect is an example of such a standard, developed over ten years ago by the Association for Manufacturing Technology.
Another critical challenge Dr. Bartles brought up was that SMMs have a hard time "retooling." Unlike the large companies in the US, who can afford to equip their establishments with advanced manufacturing technologies, most of the smaller ones struggle financially and are slow to adopt these new technologies.
According to him, this presents a problem because it affects the overall manufacturing system in the US and its ability to be globally effective and competitive. To help overcome this challenge, Dr. Bartles created Advanced Manufacturing National, a subsidiary of MTDG that helps SMMs retool their companies with the best technologies at a low cost.
Dr. Bartles also raised his cybersecurity concerns. Dealing with smart machinery presents a dangerous amount of risks. All the data collected from the machines and stored in the cloud are prone to theft and exploitation. At Advanced Manufacturing International, Inc. (AMI), Dr. Bartles provides at a modest price the latest encryption and tokenization technologies to make sure the data and the machines are cyber-secure.
