youMTS Provides a Model for Meaningful Collaboration
Eight companies teamed up this fall to bring insightful conversation to manufacturers at youMTS.
In September, Bluco hosted its third youMTS event in our Validation Center. This year’s event brought together eight companies and offered manufacturers the chance to speak with experts working on different parts of the same production challenges. Here’s a look at what makes youMTS different, and how to leverage some of those factors before you make your next capital investment.
Walk the floor of a traditional trade show, and you’ll see countless individual technologies – each one in its own separate booth. And while a booth demo can show you what a robot, positioner, or laser projection system can do, it can’t tell you two important things:
- What will it take to make that technology work with your parts and people?
- How can you put those individual technologies together into a process that works?
When youMTS was first conceived in 2020, one of the goals was to provide an alternative setting that would give manufacturers the answers to those two questions.
This year, experts gathered in our Validation Center to make it happen for the third time since the inaugural show.
Visitors from roughly a dozen manufacturing companies came out to explore the technology, try some of it themselves, and speak with people working on different parts of the same production challenge.
Time to talk about the real job
Year after year, guests and vendors alike tell us exactly why this show, in this setting, is important to them: it’s the conversations.
“YouMTS was an opportunity to have face to face meetings with vendors that I had only spoken to on the phone and see their products up close and personal in a more private setting,” said Jesse Hull of Mertz Integration. “I felt that I had more personal interaction in the validation center than I would have had at a bigger event,” he adds.
That’s a review that resonates with Bluco Sales Engineer, Todd Bennett. “This show is supposed to be exactly what Jesse said he got out of it. There’s not another setting where you have direct access to this group of people all at the same time,” he said.
And it’s having that access – in a setting where you’re not being rushed by the next 10 people in line – that allows you to ask the more relevant questions. It allows you to describe how your team works on your part using your process.
It wasn’t just guests who appreciated the chance to talk in this setting. Vendors also valued the connections they were able to make with customers and with each other. “youMTS was a great opportunity for our team to have meaningful conversations with a focused group of manufacturing professionals,” said Jessica Shoemaker of Invio Automation. “It was an intimate event, but we connected with the right people and had some great discussions, making it a really good use of our time.”
What changes when suppliers compare notes
It’s no surprise that the most meaningful conversations happen when all of the right people are in the same place. This is especially important in the world of custom engineered fabrication solutions that involve robots, cobots, and/or multiple cells. It’s hard to problem-solve when the vendor for that cobot you’re considering is sitting in one booth, the laser projector is 5 aisles away, and the fixturing is in another hall. How do you ensure that those things will all integrate seamlessly? What factors from one piece of the solution will impact the others?
At youMTS, everyone is in the same room, working the same problems. “If a customer is looking at a positioner, we’re right there to discuss how the weight of the fixture required will change the required capacity of the positioner,” points out Charlie Anthony, a Senior Sales Engineer at Bluco. “If they’re thinking about automation, we can talk about the best way to fixture for that use case before the whole project gets quoted without considering how the parts will be held,” he adds.
How to bring that approach to your next purchase
So it’s clear that the chance to have 1:1 conversations with the right group of experts is what makes youMTS successful. But you don’t have to be at youMTS to apply some of the same approaches to your next purchase.
Set yourself up for success:
Bring a representative part or drawing, along with the steps your team follows today. Where does time go? What varies from one part to the next? Where do operators have to compensate for the process?
Start with the problem – not the solution:
If you lead with “we need a robot,” the discussion will likely stay focused on the robot. But if you lead with “this assembly takes too long to locate, tack, and reposition,” the people advising you are able to conceptualize a solution that solves your actual problem, instead of one that checks the boxes you gave them.
Understand what the equipment needs from everything around it:
Don’t forget to back up so you can see the forest instead of just the trees. If you’re considering a positioner, how will the part and fixture be loaded, and what will the complete assembly weigh? If you’re considering laser projection, how will the projected guidance relate to the actual location of the part and workholding? If you’re considering automation, how will you manage the consistency of the parts presented to it?
Then ask each supplier what information they need from the others. A shared conversation can reveal assumptions that are easy to miss when every piece of equipment is discussed separately.
Reduce your risk:
Ask to walk through the full production sequence, including loading, locating, processing, unloading, and changeover. Decide what improvement you need to see across every part of that sequence. Depending on the project, that might mean less setup time, fewer handling steps, more consistent fit-up, or faster changeovers. Ask to see a virtual simulation or a hands-on demo.
The goal is to leave these conversations with more than brochures and quotes. You should understand what each recommendation assumes about your parts, your people, and the other equipment in the process.
That’s the kind of discussion youMTS was designed to make possible. It’s also one you can ask for whenever you’re considering a new manufacturing investment.
youMTS Value-Add Partners
Want to reach out to a youMTS vendor? Here’s a quick reference guide with contact names and email links.
Aligned Vision: Laser projection, contact Chris Page
ALM: Positioners, contact Kevin Toft
Bluco: Modular fixturing, contact Todd Bennett
Fronius: Welding power sources, contact Melissa Parker
Invio Automation: Autonomous Solutions, contact Travis Turner
IPG Photonics: Laser welding systems, contact Dean Brennan
MWES: Automated welding systems, contact Jeffrey Nash
