Chicago has long been a city where massive expositions showed off the latest technological developments. So, when you arrive at McCormick Place in September for IMTS, not only will you see unique solutions for any challenges you may face and the most advanced manufacturing technology from name-brand companies and niche specialists alike from around the world (the “I,” after all, stands for “International”), but you will be stepping into a site steeped in the rich history of manufacturing and industry.
The Windy City has welcomed such spectacles as the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, which celebrated the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the New World (its dedication ceremonies were held in 1892). Then, 40 years later, the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair opened under the banner of A Century of Progress International Exposition. Events like these have profoundly enriched Chicago’s history, leaving a lasting impact that continues to shape the city – and IMTS itself.
And Then the Railroads
In 1948 there was a less well-known but still significant expo in Chicago: the Chicago Railroad Fair.
“The Railroad Fair?” you wonder. Yes.
The reason why this event is important is because it was attended by Colonel Robert McCormick, who happened to be the owner and publisher of the Chicago Tribune (back when print newspapers were tremendously important to their local communities and newspaper publishers had Big Ideas).
McCormick, seeing the success of the Railroad Fair, decided that the city needed an expo hall, so he began lobbying for it. By 1955 Illinois approved construction of an expo center, and in 1958, it issued $41.8 million in construction bonds.
Building began in 1959, and the McCormick Place expo center was completed in 1960.
The first event? The Modern Living Home and Flower Show. And that was just the start of many that took advantage of the modern amenities provided by the exhibitions-dedicated structure on the shore of Lake Michigan.
Then, in January 1967, the building burned down.
New Beginnings and Architectural Lessons
Construction of a new McCormick Place began in 1968. The reconstruction reused foundations and portions of what had remained of the original building.* In 1971, McCormick Place reopened. It was designed in the style of legendary architect Mies van der Rohe, the originator of the famous quote "Less is more." The first event held in the new building was the 63rd annual Chicago Auto Show.
But since 1971, McCormick Place seems to have adopted a “more is more” policy, as the facilities have continuously expanded, reaching roughly 2.6 million square feet of exhibit space in its four buildings – one of the largest interconnected facilities in the world. It now offers more exhibit space than any other facility in the Western Hemisphere.
McCormick, who died in 1955, before the original building that was named for him opened, is smiling somewhere: His idea put Chicago on the global map when it comes to events. As has IMTS.
*The original building and its replacement is now known as Lakeside Center, aka the East Building. There are also the North and South buildings, which are connected by the Grand Concourse, and the West Building. Combined, there is 2.6 million square feet of exhibit space, with 1.2 million on one level.
The McCormick Place Lakeside Center (aka the East Hall). It was built in 1968, as the original McCormick Place building on that site burned down the previous year. The style of the building was influenced by architect Mies van der Rohe, who taught at the nearby Illinois Institute of Technology. “Less is more,” he said. At IMTS, more is more. (Image: McCormick Place)
The ‘Modern Era’
In 1927, IMTS, then known as the National Machine Tool Builders’ Exposition, was born in Cleveland, Ohio, where it would stay for nearly a half century. In 1972, it migrated to McCormick Place, where it has stayed ever since.
Those who are fans of NASCAR know that in 1972, the racing series entered what is known as the “modern era.” Arguably, the same thing occurred with IMTS that year, when the show moved to its new home in Chicago and an agreement was signed with the European Association of the Machine Tool Industries (CECIMO) so that IMTS would occur every even-numbered year and the European Exposition Mondiale de la Machine-Outil (EMO) show would be held on odd years. Like NASCAR, whose modern era has seen the racing series’ focus turn toward its fans, IMTS in its modern era has focused on its attendees.
Then, in 1996, Peter Eelman joined AMT as the person in charge of IMTS. Now the chief experience officer, Eelman and his team have 13 events under their belts, with 2024 being the 14th. For many modern-day manufacturers who attend IMTS, his shows are the only ones they’ve ever known.
All About the Details
Another Mies van der Rohe quote is “God is in the details.” As an architect, he meant that all the little things that make up the whole are essential, so it is important to pay attention to them.
Eelman and his team take this approach in executing IMTS, ensuring that attendees have as seamless a visit as possible, whether this means arranging equipment and systems into 10 technology sectors (e.g., Additive Manufacturing, Tooling & Workholding, etc.) so that spending time at the show is efficient, or making it absolutely clear where one needs to go to catch the Metra train.
It is all about the details. Each IMTS is individually architected.
Eelman emphasizes that if one attended the show in 2022, they will want to attend in 2024 because show staff work to make every show different in some meaningful way. This has led to not only the creation of AMT’s Emerging Technology Center, where people are able to see the advances in industries ranging from automotive to 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.
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 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. Disassembling the existing exhibits wasn’t an option.
Eelman recalls his team, the exhibitor, contractors, safety personnel, and others scrambling to figure out how to get it where it needed to be.
“We finally came up with a plan to put it on a big lift truck and to elevate it so we could move it through the hall.”
At one point in the middle of the night, Eelman looked out his office window overlooking the floor of the hall and saw the massive machine seemingly floating down the aisles above the other machines and exhibits. It was slow moving. It took all night to get in position. When neighboring exhibitors arrived the next morning, they were astonished at the sight of the massive machine having apparently teleported in their midst overnight by magic.
Organized Magic
“Astonished” is a good word for what Eelman hopes people will feel at IMTS 2024, which will be his last.
Eelman is retiring.
He considered retiring after IMTS 2018, which would have been an absolute mic-drop moment, as it was a record breaker by all metrics: 129,415 people registered. There were 2,123 booths and 2,563 exhibitors covering 1.4 million square feet.
But he stayed on. And then 2020 happened. And IMTS didn’t.
Eelman decided to make sure IMTS got back on a typical schedule. He’d spent most of his career making sure that the show went off without a hitch, and he wanted to leave that as his legacy.
IMTS 2022 was a success. And when we spoke with Eelman at the start of this summer, he and his team were hard at work organizing September’s event.
“We’re now back on a normal show cycle,” he says. “The routine is back.”
Eelman recalls that early in his position, after an IMTS was completed and his team had some time to decompress, he would call them into a meeting.
“I would have a stack of floor plans from the show and then rip them up in front of them. I wanted to make it clear that in two years we would do a different show.”
He admits that was a bit dramatic. But it worked.
Although he says the routine is back, there is nothing routine about the experience of IMTS – regardless of the year.
With 13 IMTS shows behind him, people often ask Peter Eelman, chief experience officer for AMT, the owner and producer of IMTS, which one is his most memorable.
After some considered hesitation, he responds, “I think the 2014 show with the Strati is my favorite because everything culminated there.”
While Eelman and his team had established the Emerging Technology Center a decade before, and the show floor had long been organized into a collection of pavilions (now sectors), they wanted to do something different for 2014.
Enter: The Strati
The concept was simple enough. They would 3D print a car on the floor of IMTS. No one had seen anything like that – anywhere.
AMT worked with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Local Motors, and a crew of dedicated people. They not only planned to have it printed on the floor of IMTS 2014, but they would drive it out of McCormick Place.
“It could have been a disaster,” Eelman admits.
It had never been done before. Not at ORNL. Not at Local Motors. Nowhere.
They couldn’t even do a practice run. Whether it could be done in time was a big unknown. They weren’t even 100% confident they could print the structure without some snafu.
But they started the process. It drew interest from attendees. It drew interest from exhibitors. It drew interest from people outside the manufacturing community as news outlets came to McCormick Place and covered it – it was even featured on the “Today” show.
The Strati was printed. Fitted with a powertrain and suspension and driven out of McCormick Place as planned.
IMTS 2024 will celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the Strati with a special exhibit with the car and an IMTS+ Main Stage conversation with the participants of the remarkable undertaking that made IMTS 2014 so special.
To read the rest of the IMTS Issue of MT Magazine, click here.
