It has been a fulfilling experience the past several weeks as we have participated in two significant international events related to our discipline. The first was the International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) in Chicago — the largest trade show in North America. Just a week later, we were out in Phoenix for the Global Product Data Interoperability Summit (GPDIS), a more specialized technical conference closely aligned with the direction of our recent product innovations.
IMTS in Chicago
At the co-located IMTS 2024 Conference, our CTO/COO Ram Eswaran presented on the topic of "Data Exchange Best Practices." It was rewarding to engage with the audience on this topic, and we thank those who attended for your questions during the discussion portion.
 |
| Ram Eswaran presenting at the IMTS 2024 Conference |
Because the IMTS event is so large and covers so many areas of technology, it brings together stakeholders from across the sphere of manufacturing and engineering. From our perspective, engaging with everyone from the shop floor machinists to the CEOs accurately reflects the promise of effective interoperability: the chance to improve operations up and down the line.
To help start conversations with folks from different backgrounds and different parts of the world, we had fun introducing a novel interactive demonstration of our recently announced cloud-ready technology. If you came by the booth to play our 3D mobile game, we hope you had some fun and could challenge your colleagues to top your score!
 |
| IMTS attendees taking turns with our 3D mobile game & cloud-ready technology demo |
GPDIS in Phoenix
The GPDIS event is a technical conference more narrowly focused on the topic of interoperability. At that event, I had the privilege to give a presentation on "Enabling MBD in Aerospace Part Supplier Systems." Preparing for that led me to several notable sources that serve as landmarks of where the field is positioned with regard to the emergence of MBD. One of these which is publicly available is a "MBE playbook for suppliers" published by a major aerospace OEM, Lockheed Martin. If you're interested to get a snapshot of these principles at play in the real world of manufacturing, you can find that document on the Lockheed website.
 |
| John McCullough presenting at GPDIS 2024 |
Whether it was hotdogs with a pickle spear and fresh tomato by Lake Michigan or fry bread out in the desert, our travels to Chicago and Phoenix showed us plenty that we wouldn't find elsewhere. If our paths crossed at one of these events (or both!), we hope you found them as productive and insightful as we did.
