Dwight Perkins, P.E.

Vice President for Oklahoma City Manufacturing Operations (CMI Operation)
Member of the Advisory Board

Biography

As Vice President of the Oklahoma City Manufacturing Operations of CMI Corporation, a producer of highway construction equipment, Dwight Perkins manages a 700,000-square-foot manufacturing facility and 1000 employees. IE, he says, “prepared me very well in both the technical skills and people skills.”

His career in manufacturing began in 1970 when he joined Wilson’s Foods, a company best known for packaged meats, as an industrial engineer. After a few years, he joined the IE department at the General Aviation division of Rockwell International. In 1978 he received his Master of Science degree in Industrial Engineering from OU and was soon invited to join CMI as its Industrial Engineering manager. He held this post for 16 years and then joined Fred Jones Manufacturing as the Vice President of Manufacturing. In 1998 he returned to CMI and began his current job. During his tenure at CMI he managed the complete reengineering of the company from a traditional organizational structure to a customer-focused strategic-business-unit structure.

A registered Professional Engineer, Mr. Perkins describes IEs as “the engineers with people skills.” Industrial engineers, he says “have the most diversified professional paths of growth and development among all engineering disciplines.”

Mr. Perkins serves the community as a member of Rotary International. An avid pilot, he is a member of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association and is on the advisory board for David J. Perry Airport in Goldsby, Oklahoma.