Visiting IMTS 2018

A trade show for everything in manufacturing — and some really cool tech.

Our team had the opportunity to visit the International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) happening this week in Chicago. Wow. What an overwhelming whirlwind of innovation in the manufacturing and industrial spaces! Here are some of the top highlights and trends that inspired and excited us.

Trend: Digital Product Classes

We saw four big classes of digital products being presented:

1. Interfaces for detailed analysis and metrology
   We saw tools to analyze porosity, reflectivity, density, and many other factors that were designed to be consider one piece at a time in great detail. We’re obviously non-experts, but these seem to be tools used away from production lines used to assess the quality of prototypes or spot check individual pieces. The interfaces are designed to support detailed analysis, rather than fast analysis.
2. Interfaces for analyzing production quality
   There were quite a few booths with simulated production lines running at speed, at most of these had some sort of digital interface that was reporting on production metrics (like how many pieces were moving through the line versus the nominal capacity of the line) and production quality (how many pieces are passing optical quality checks). These interfaces were entirely speed-oriented. They tended to be dashboard-y, and the tended to be weighted towards reporting on problems rather than reporting on successes.
3. Interfaces for creation
   This one is pretty straightforward. Who knew there were so many CAD software producers?
4. Interfaces for productivity
   Not surprisingly, we saw a fair number of ERP-style resource and logistics management software. We spent less time with these (their booths didn’t have robots), but this class seemed to be fundamentally pretty similar to other ERP products in other industries.

Trend: Proactivity

Connected to the idea of interfaces reporting on problems rather than successes was a related trend that started with Mitsubishi and continued with other vendors: proactive notifications. Using machine data to understand when a machine or part is about to go bad helps manufacturers preemptively fix a problem before it becomes a major issue and disrupts production.

Trend: Apps as Factory Controls

While it might be disingenuous to call this a major trend, we did have a lengthy conversation with Amerimation about their analog control interfaces. At a show where everyone was showing the latest and greatest in touch screens on the factory floor, Amerimation was one of the few vendors we saw really take into consideration how things like grit and gloved hands might hinder user experience.

What we also learned from them, is they do allow phone apps to do factory controls. While it is a touch screen, the technology allows someone to use a form factor and device more comfortable to them. It got us thinking about how leveraging an existing consumer technology could impact what the factory floor starts to look like. Could the future transition a traditional lineperson into a remote job?

Highlight: AR + Sales

By far, one of the coolest things we saw (in addition to an awesome Canon Surface Reflectance Analyzer) was ATLATL. Using augmented reality technology, ATLATL makes a unity-based tool that allows customers to build and visualize what the custom equipment their ordering will look like in actual space. Using their tool, you can take a spec of something like an excavator, use your tablet’s camera, and drop it into your construction site at scale. Users can even jump into the cockpit of the devices to get a feel for the controls inside.

Trend: Complex problems need to be simplified

This was a trend we noticed that is only somewhat being solved by the machines and softwares we were shown. What was obvious was that everyone we met was incredibly intelligent and had created some equally intelligent software to operate their intricate and innovative machinery. However, after many conversations, we found that a large group of the user base for these design, programming, and testing softwares didn’t use some or even most of the features built in the application.

While the features were cool and could be useful to the right person, we realized the same user problem that pops in other data heavy industries, such as finance or healthcare, also pops up in the industrial space. Namely, exposing lots of complicated and complex information to your users to prove how smart the system is. The truth is, most users find this amount of information overwhelming and either don’t use the system as you intended or opt to use another system all together.

Being product strategists and designers, of course, our perspective is to“simplify it.” We understand our bias, but our hope for next year is more user-research-led releases to ensure the digital products being put out are as best-in-class as so much of the machinery we saw showcased.

Trend: Windows UI patterns

Related to the complex problem points, we saw a lot of custom products using Win95-style tree menus to present large quantities of hierarchical data, and we also saw a few interfaces using the ribbon menu interface pattern introduced by Office 2007.

Highlight: Beckhoff’s voice integration

German company Beckhoff Automation showed off some cool software to use with machinery, one of which contains a voice integration to be used in plant offices and bluetooth — which makes sense, considering the plant floor is so noisy. The integration allows the device to tell its operator via a bluetooth earpiece when a machine they may not be able to see is down or may need maintenance.

Their team has been doing some exploration around best practices to accommodate the manufacturing context (which most voice platforms are not specifically trained in) and are taking the demo on the road in order to get customer feedback before they release it. (We’re always fans of user testing and interviews, however you can make it happen for your company.) This is one of the first voice UI integrations we’ve seen in the manufacturing space and are staying tuned to see how it’s adopted by users and clients alike.

Saw or experienced anything interesting at IMTS? Share it with us!

Thanks to Josh Lucas-Falk, Diana Deibel, and Theresa Stewart for their thoughts on the show.