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How To See IMTS — and Make It Matter

Advice from a man who has attended plenty of shows — and who also happens to run AMT.

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Doug Woods, AMT president, recommends that as you walk the floor of IMTS, you think in terms of a problem that you have in your manufacturing operations and then find — and given the breadth of the show, this is likely — the solution(s) that will solve it.

Doug Woods has been coming to IMTS since 1978, which probably puts him into a small category of people who have attended 22 shows. (It would be 23 shows but COVID put the 2020 show on hiatus).

But Woods is in an even smaller category — a category of one — because he has attended the show as a visitor, an exhibitor and as the president of AMT – The Association For Manufacturing Technology, the organizer of IMTS.

While his current position makes him understandably bullish about the Show, it is his previous role as an attendee that makes him appreciative of the challenges that attendees face as they step into McCormick Place.

How to Make the Show Count

And he has a piece of advice that can make a visit to IMTS really payoff:

“Don’t go shopping for a technology but for a solution to a specific problem.”

Woods explains that there is a multitude of technologies at IMTS, conveniently organized into “sectors” — like Automation, Additive Manufacturing, Metal Removal, and Software. This allows the attendees to zero in on areas that they may find beneficial.

Woods recommends that it is highly useful to talk to the people who are in the exhibits about what the problem is to get a better understanding of whether that technology is the right solution. He notes that given the breadth of the exhibiting companies — from small firms in a 10 ft. x 10 ft. booth to major OEMs with an expansive footprint — there will be a solution. It is a matter of knowing how to look — and what questions to ask.

The Simplification Advantage

One of the things Woods says is beneficial to deployment of technologies that were once pretty much impractical to small- to-medium-sized manufacturers is a recognition by the OEMs that they have to simplify what they have on offer.

“For years and years,” Woods says, “automation has been too complicated for many of these manufacturers — and I was an automation guy.” (Woods ran a custom machinery/system company so he was a customer for equipment as well as a vendor.)

But now, whether it is simpler equipment like cobots or improved communications protocols, that’s changed. “A lot of these things are so much easier, advanced, streamlined, reliable — and the cost point has come down.”

Woods suggests that things like digital twins have become both accessible and useful to smaller companies.

While companies can have limited resources when it comes to digital tools, Woods points out that just as there are updates to phone apps that expand the capabilities without resulting in a wholesale change of how it was used before the update, the same thing is happening for many manufacturing software tools (i.e., that CAD or CAM package one is familiar with is often enhanced, not transformed).

Growing the Business

Woods says that technologies exhibited at IMTS can help companies increase their business in several ways. He notes that post-COVID many firms have found a niche for their operations. But perhaps to differentiate from other shops that are competitive it may be that it is useful to scale up. For example, he says, it may be that a shop was machining within a 0.5-ft3 envelope. What if larger equipment was acquired that doubled the work envelope?

Or, he points out, there could be a company that primarily does work for customers in the aerospace industry, working with exotic materials. Perhaps that know-how could be applied, with the addition of some different equipment, to the medical industry, machining things like replacement hips and knees.

But there are a couple of things in the U.S. economy at large that provide greater opportunities: foreign direct investment (FDI) and reshoring.

According to “The 2024 Kearney FDI Confidence Index,” the U.S. is the number-one country for FDI. What’s more, 88% of the global survey respondents to Kearney said they are planning to increase their FDI over the next three years.

Which simply means that there are more foreign manufacturing firms opening facilities in the U.S., which can provide more opportunities for firms ranging from prototype shops to contract manufacturers.

Over Here

Then there is the reshoring phenomenon.

Woods points out that for a number of reasons the reshoring phenomenon that really took off during and after the pandemic, when it became abundantly clear that what had thought to be robust supply chains were actually fragile, results in more openings for manufacturers than existed even a mere five years ago.

What’s more, the CHIPS and Science Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and the Inflation Reduction Act all have domestic manufacturing requirements for funding within them, which again means more potential opportunities for companies — assuming they have the equipment and capabilities to address the needs.

Again, the resources on the floor of the exhibit space of IMTS as well as in the conference rooms where presentations are being made can help companies get a handle on what they may need to enhance or change their operations in order to take advantage of FDI, reshoring and legislative programs.

You’ll Probably See Him

Each year Woods travels around the world attending manufacturing technology expositions and conferences. Part of it is because of the job description for being the president of AMT. Another — arguably larger — part is because of his inherent interest in the tech.

And while he has a schedule chock full of meetings from September 9 to 14, he will be taking as much time as he can to walk the aisles of IMTS — and he will walk every aisle.

Job requirement? Somewhat. Passion for manufacturing? Absolutely.

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