MT Magazine July/August 2024

FEATURE STORY

JULY/AUGUST 2024

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space exploration, as well as experience fun attractions, like a giant hot air balloon in McCormick Square or a man flying in a jet suit in front of the venue. This is not to say that the importance is diminished in any way of the tech on the show floor or the education being provided in the conference rooms. There are more than a dozen conference programs that are absolutely synchronous with the types of things that are on the show floor: process innovations, alternative processes, plant operations, quality control and metrology, automation – which are the session tracks of the most notable on-site conference, The IMTS 2024 Conference. In addition, the IMTS ELEVATE programs – Job Shops, LATAM, and Women Make Manufacturing Move – boost connections and highlight issues important to the manufacturing community. These sessions and programs exemplify the attention Eelman and his team pay to the details, as well as how they focus on creating a memorable IMTS experience for manufacturers of all backgrounds. Why It Lasts Eelman acknowledges there is a recognition that shows – especially megashows like IMTS – are fading away. He suggests that a lot of that has to do with the fact that there is a predictability to attending them: If you’ve seen one, you’ve pretty much seen them all. “We want to do something that is unique and bold – for every show,” he says. So, what does the tremendous size of the McCormick Place complex mean to IMTS? For one thing, breadth of coverage. “As things come and go in manufacturing, we don’t have to say no,” Eelman explains. “We cover the wide face of manufacturing, essentially all of the major disciplines.” While there are shows that focus on particular processes, Eelman says the footprint of McCormick Place allows the inclusion of an array of manufacturing processes. What’s more, as various technologies wax and wane (e.g., additive grows; EDM shrinks), IMTS has the wherewithal to accommodate all of them. It could be an exaggeration to say that IMTS has something for everyone. But if it is, it is an infinitesimal exaggeration.

one-year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, as people were still highly sensitive. Later, as the financial crisis of 2008 unfolded during the move-out of IMTS 2008, the team pivoted once again to weather economic turbulence for a successful execution of IMTS 2010. Then there was the challenge of 2020, when restrictions against gatherings of more than a few people – to say nothing of 100,000 – forced the cancellation of an in-person IMTS. AMT, which owns and produces IMTS, created the IMTS+ digital platform in response. And there are all the small things that could go wrong that do go wrong when putting on an event, thanks to the seemingly inevitable Murphy’s Law. Thinking back to some of the things that would make most people’s hair suddenly turn gray, Eelman recalls an exceedingly tricky situation during the setup of one show. Consider that there are hundreds of exhibitors, many of whom have large pieces of equipment that are located, plumbed, and wired on the floor of one of the exhibit halls. When the Chicago Auto Show occurs at McCormick Place, if a company needs to bring in a new car after all the other vehicles are in place, doing so is not particularly challenging, as it is a machine on wheels. That’s far from the situation at IMTS. Setting up the floor at IMTS is something like a reverse game of Jenga: Things must be carefully organized and added until everything is appropriately in place. And those things typically weigh tons. One year, Eelman says, an exhibitor located in the front corner of a hall – and keep in mind that the loading docks are in the rear – had a machine that was coming to the show. But it was late in arriving. Eelman and team were told the machine was coming. Eventually it did – two days before the show was to open. By then, almost all the other exhibits in the hall were positioned. The machine was too wide to fit down the aisles. That’s McCormick Square during IMTS 2022. Yes, that man is flying. You’ll never know what you’ll find at the premier manufacturing technology show.

Facing Challenges When you’ve been putting on massive events every two years since 1996, you certainly have had lots of things to deal with, both internal to the show and in the world outside the venue. Eelman remembers such challenges, like the dot-com boom of 1998. That year, a surge of startups flooded IMTS but disappeared by IMTS 2000, forcing a massive reshaping of the floor plan. On Sept. 11, 2002, Eelman and his team worked to be respectful of the