Published 09/15/2026

Who Runs the Robots? The Answer Is on the Floor Today.

As automation reshapes shopfloor roles, IMTS 2026 is doubling as a recruiting, training and retention event, matching new machines with the people who’ll run them.

Christina Fuges

Editorial Director, MoldMaking Technology

Every automation success story starts the same way: a shop buys a robot, a cobot or a piece of software that promises to close the labor gap. Then reality sets in. Someone still has to program the cell, troubleshoot the fault code or catch the part that comes out wrong.

Automation hasn’t solved the labor shortage; it’s changed what shops need people to know how to do. Fewer hands may be needed on the floor, but the ones who stay need to know more, faster, than the generation before them. That shift is exactly why recruiting, training and retention have become as central to IMTS 2026 as the machine tools themselves, showing up not only on the show floor but in the show’s own conference programming.

Recruiting Beyond the Résumé

IMTS 2026 will host the 14^th Smartforce Student Summit, expecting over 14,000 students and educators at McCormick Place. This year, there’s a new feature called Smartforce Career Pathways, a digital job board that showcases entry-level job openings from exhibitors to the many students attending.

At SendCutSend, CEO Jim Belosic has hired machinists from a wide range of prior careers, including a VA nurse, a school custodian and a graphic designer among a recent dozen. He looks for curiosity and motivation over manufacturing experience, because once the right systems are in place, “it allows people to get started very, very quickly.”

Simba Jonga, founder of the recruiting platform Laborup, sees the same pattern from the other side: skilled tradespeople are often working outside manufacturing entirely. He calls it “a misallocation of talent” and that’s exactly the kind of gap a trade show floor, full of hands-on demos and real conversations, is built to close.

Training That Keeps Up With the Machines

Recruiting solves half the problem. Training solves the other half and IMTS has become a meeting ground for it. America’s Cutting Edge (ACE) and Metallurgical Engineering Trades Apprenticeships & Learning (METAL), workforce programs supported by the Department of Defense, are expanding to more than 100 training sites by 2030 and will have a visible presence on the floor through the Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation’s (IACMI) exhibit. Universal Robots will staff a hands-on demo booth at the Student Summit; in past editions, the company has also run guided Cobot Walks stopping at partner booths like NIMS and the American Precision Museum.

Schools are adapting too. Nathan Edkin at Pennsylvania College of Technology says employers don’t need to build training programs from scratch. “Tell us what you need today,” he says, referring to Penn College’s customizable workforce model, which upskills more than 5,000 people a year across manufacturing disciplines, including plastics, automation and CNC. The college’s overall degree-program placement rate runs near 98% and Edkin’s bigger point is that most manufacturers still don’t know these training pathways exist until they see them demonstrated in person.

IMTS’s own conference track is making a version of the same argument: in a Tuesday, September 15 session, “The Automation Workforce Is Being Built Now: Is Your Shop Aligned?” Igus inc.’s Jacob Sanchez points to a region where high schools deployed working automation cells faster than local employers modernized their shop floors. This is a warning that education can outpace industry if manufacturers aren’t paying attention.

What Retention Looks Like When Roles Change

As automation absorbs repetitive tasks, the jobs that remain lean more heavily on judgment, such as troubleshooting, mold maintenance and process decisions that a robot can’t make on its own. It’s more important than ever to keep skilled troubleshooters, losing one costs a shop much more than losing an operator. It also makes hiring tougher since the qualities that show someone will succeed in those roles (curiosity, responsibility, follow-through) are harder to assess than just checking for a machine tool certification.

At TK Mold & Engineering, Director of Employee Development Krista Barr, who is also a licensed social worker, treats retention as a whole-person issue. “We’re not just building molds; we’re building people,” she says. Her team pairs cross-training and flexible scheduling with regular check-ins on pay, workload and personal stress.

The upcoming Elevate Conference held Wednesday, September 16 at IMTS 2026 and organized with the Women in Manufacturing Association, focuses on an important aspect of employee retention: representation. The conference offers sessions on career change and leadership that aim to help companies retain and grow current employees rather than just recruit new ones.

Retention also means not expecting current staff to become automation and robotics experts immediately. There are numerous options for shops looking to upskill workers with ease. Hirebotics offers collaborative robots (cobots) that can be controlled and programmed from a smartphone, eliminating the need for complex coding. Standard Bots takes it a step further, enabling robots to learn a task by watching instead of needing to be programmed. Formic Technologies is addressing the cost issue by providing automation financing options that help shops avoid high upfront expenses. All three companies are promoting a core idea: automation that existing employees can operate.

What Happens to the People

It’s reductive to think that changes in automation are simply taking away manufacturing jobs — the truth is that they're fundamentally changing what those jobs look like. Discussions at events like the IMTS Job Shops Workshop and the Industrial AI Conference’s emphasize that machines won't replace people. Rather, they provide tools that require new knowledge and skills.

The tasks most at risk of automation are simple, repetitive jobs that don’t require much skill. What’s left are more challenging roles that involve training new employees quickly, making sure processes are clear for everyone and creating a work culture that encourages skilled workers and decision makers to stay.

IMTS 2026 will attract manufacturers interested in automation. But many of them will spend just as much time at the Smartforce Student Summit, in certification sessions, networking events and attending talks, as they will on the show floor watching robots in action.