5 Tips for Getting the Most From the Historic Return of North America’s Biggest Manufacturing Event

In early 2020, as the lockdowns were underway, there was a point I felt was important for Modern Machine Shop’s writers and editors to see. Namely, a divergence of experience was underway. We were not experiencing the same reality as our audience, the manufacturers whose work we aspire to be part of. At that time, we were working remotely, but manufacturers were not. To do manufacturing means to go to manufacturing facilities. New covid precautions were put in place at these facilities, but other than that, for many of these shops, work continued as it had. For much of our audience, work through the pandemic was largely business as usual. 

Sort of. True, the work went on. Yet to characterize manufacturing as business-as-usual during this time overlooks something important. During the lockdown and throughout the pandemic, manufacturers often had little interaction with other manufacturers. There was minimal in-person interaction between companies. Manufacturing is a huge pursuit generally focused on small details, including tight tolerances and particular customer needs. Through the pandemic, the small and near concerns became the focus almost entirely. The sense of the hugeness of manufacturing, the scope and importance of this shared undertaking, receded. And the one regular event that could have been counted on to convey and reinforce this hugeness to the manufacturers of North America, the biennial International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS), was not held at all.

Now, this year, IMTS will soon be back again.

And along with you, we are preparing for the historic resumption of IMTS as an in-person event in September at McCormick Place in Chicago.

It has been a long time. IMTS was of course canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic, so we have gone four years since IMTS was held. But for many manufacturers, the gap is longer. A sizable portion of companies are in the habit of sending teams to only every other IMTS. That means, for some, there has not been an opportunity to attend the show since 2016. Thus, many manufacturing professionals have become established in their careers without there having been a chance to attend IMTS until now. More than at any previous installment of the show, this year’s IMTS will host newcomers to the show who are not new to manufacturing at all.

For them, some basics: IMTS is the biggest manufacturing event in North America. The show comes close to filling McCormick Place, the largest convention center in North America. The focus of the show is machine tools and metalworking equipment of all types — practically any machine that cuts or shapes metal — but also much more. All the tooling, software, gaging and other resources necessary to make use of machine tools is fully represented as well. More recently arrived manufacturing technologies have also found a home here. IMTS is now a major showcase for additive manufacturing (AM) technology, with a pavilion devoted to AM and a returning two-day Additive Manufacturing Conference, which is the leading event in its own right addressing AM for part production.

Nothing I can say will prepare newcomers for the experience of the show. The size of the venue, the scope of each hall, the sizes of the booths of major exhibitors: all of this has to be seen to be understood. But what I want to suggest is that even returning attendees might be rusty in their preparedness for this show. As I say, it has been a long time. For the newcomers, and as a refresher for those returning, here are a few tips to consider — advice for getting the full value from the experience of attending IMTS.

1. Make a Plan

Did I mention the show is big? Just wandering, and only that, is unlikely to deliver an attendee to all the discoveries and encounters most beneficial to the opportunities of that person’s enterprise and the needs of that person’s shop. Sensory overload combined with the distances involved make wandering a risky strategy.

Make a plan instead. Spend quiet time in advance of the show. List the exhibitors you know you want to visit. Note the booth numbers of all these exhibitors, and cluster your visits by exhibit hall (North, South, West, Lakeside Center) to minimize walking time. Use the MyShow Planner tool on IMTS.com to help with this.

Remember, there is far too much of the show to see. If you could manage to visit and give serious attention to three exhibitors per hour over the course of seven hours per day for two days of planned visits at the show, then those would be two intense, busy and probably exhausting days — and they would not even get you to 2% of the show. Taking time to identify which exhibitors to visit is an important investment.

2. Wear Comfortable Shoes

This advice is a bit of an inside joke. In every pre-IMTS issue of MMS magazine we have ever done for as long as anyone can remember, we have always found some way to remind people to wear comfortable shoes.

The larger point of the advice is this: Be comfortable. Go into your days at IMTS carrying the resources you need to remain focused. This might mean snacks, water or medication. It probably means backup power for your phone and a pen and notepad. You are there to discover and absorb a lot of possibilities. You don’t want some nagging lack to limit your bandwidth or stand in the way of what you might see.

3. Explore

Wandering is not effective as a sole strategy, but it works well as an aid or augment to your known plans. In addition to what you know you want to see, make time for what you will want to see that you do not know about yet. The best way to do this: Once you have determined how much time you need to visit the companies you know you want to see, add another half-day. That is, an open half-day just to walk slowly, look around and see what catches your eye.

You are not necessarily looking for new technology or new products during this time. The discovery you are apt to make likely instead involves some possibility that is simply new to you: some long-established tool, machine or system that perfectly matches a challenge or opportunity only now presenting itself to your shop.

4. Think About the Future

IMTS comes only every other year. Many shops do not attend every one. What capabilities is your shop likely to need in the coming two to four years?

Think big. Two to four years is enough time for significant change. If business expands significantly, what type of capacity is your shop likely to need? What types of automation are warranted, given the likelihood that adding personnel will be challenging? At this IMTS, robots are liable to get more attention than at any other previous year for the show.

And then there is additive manufacturing. Producers and OEMs across all sectors recognize that 3D printing is liable to account for an important share of their part production in the future. IMTS has changed significantly in recognition of this. It has opened to encompass AM, with the AM Pavilion now representing one of the sizable exhibit areas at the show. You will find me at two different AM events held within the show: The Additive Manufacturing Conference has been held at IMTS since 2014, and it is the leading conference event focused on AM’s advancing role as a means of part production. A new, smaller event, the 3D Printing Workshop for Job Shops, is about using lower-cost 3D printers in job shops and similar facilities as an aid and complement to machining.

5. Be Inspired

Machining is a community. It’s just that it is a big community performing a broad variety of work across many sectors. That community cannot come together often, and it missed an opportunity to do so two years ago, but representatives of the entire scope of that community will be present in Chicago next month.

Come to IMTS, then, in part just to learn or remind yourself what you are a part of. That is, how big industrial metalworking is and how much it does. We will all go back to our day-to-day concerns: the tolerances, the customer needs. But thanks in part to IMTS, we will bring new tools and technologies to bear that will let us meet the problems and the opportunities more effectively. And thanks to IMTS, we will also carry with us — for the two years until this vast community can come together again — a sense of the scope and significance of the work we are all advancing, and the number of people who join us in it every day.