Robert Schoenberger, editor in chief of IndustryWeek; Thomas Wilk, editor in chief of Plant Services; Robert Brooks, editor in chief of American Machinist and Foundry Management & Technology; and Sharon Spielman, Technical Editor at Machine Design, joined over 84,000 other attendees at the 2024 International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) in Chicago, Illinois. This year’s event offers 1.2 million square feet of exhibit space, with 1,816 exhibiting companies and over 7,600 people attending educational events. If you couldn’t make it to this year’s event, don’t worry. We’ve got you covered. In this special episode of Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast, our editors share what they’ve seen, learned, and experienced live from the show floor.
Below is an excerpt from the podcast:
RS: So, Tom, let's turn it over to you. You've been walking around all day, the past couple days. What have you seen that caught your eye?
TW: You know, it's a huge show, and I think it's interesting because my magazine focuses on the industrial asset management community. At this show, representing are a lot of CMMS companies. And I thought it was interesting that companies like Brightly, Limble, UpKeep, and MaintainX, they are all here to serve the market that IMTS serves, which is machine cutters, metal cutters, and additive manufacturing. I think one of the interesting things that I learned is that the market for CMMS services to manage your work orders, to manage your maintenance work, to develop an online history, this is a market which is really right for that kind of service. There are lots of people who may not have their critical assets, their CNC machines, stored in the CMMS. I've heard a lot of stories of people who, when they’ve put their work orders together, they've used pen and paper, or they stack up the sheets of paper on the corner of a desk and simply pass them out. This is a market which is being served very well by these automated work order management systems.
The other thing that I've noticed is that we do a lot of content focused on compressed air systems, the systems that power other machines. I visited Kaeser Compressors today, as well as Sullair/Hitachi Global Air Power, and both of those companies have some interesting products they are rolling out. Kaeser is focusing these days especially on adding sensors to their compressor equipment to help these machinists understand better the quality of the air that's powering these other assets, whether there is water getting into the air, whether there's oil from the compressor getting into the air. Kaeser is now well on the way to offering this monitoring as a service as part of their compressor offerings.
RS: Everyone wants to be a service these days. No one wants to sell a product when you only get the money once. You have to have an ongoing revenue stream.
