Report Shows Manufacturers Are Mostly Optimistic
The summer edition of the McGladrey Manufacturing and Distribution Monitor, a quarterly survey of manufacturing executives on the state of the industry, found that manufacturers, on the whole, are feeling pretty good about their operations. But, if you ask them about what’s going on outside their four walls, that’s an entirely different story, Industry Week reports.
“The economy, rising commodity prices, federal gridlock, federal over-regulation — all of those things that manufacturers can’t control, they’re very concerned and pessimistic about,” said Karen Kurek, national manufacturing practice leader for RSM McGladrey Inc.
Conversely, manufacturers seem “fairly positive” about the things they can control, such as making their businesses more productive, Kurek told IndustryWeek.
When asked about the health of their companies, 44% of the manufacturing executives answered that their firms are thriving and growing, compared with 45% of executives in the spring, according to the survey. Meanwhile, 52% of the survey respondents said their businesses are holding their own, while only 3% said their businesses are declining. Those percentages are nearly identical to the spring survey.
Manufacturers in the “thriving and growing” category are engaging in a number of best practices, McGladrey notes, including:
- Embedding lean and other continuous-improvement approaches into their cultures.
- Investing in workforce training and automation.
- Formally measuring vendor performance.
- Tracking key business metrics in real-time on executive dashboards.
- Expanding internationally and exploring emerging markets.
Among other indicators that manufacturers continue to get healthier operationally — regardless of what’s happening outside their four walls — 76% of the executives said their companies have improved productivity in the last 12 months.
At the same time, the survey of more than 620 executives found that external factors such as the economy are a lingering source of anxiety. Some 60% of the survey respondents said they are pessimistic about the U.S. economy, up from 38% in the spring survey. Regarding the world economy, 64% of the respondents said they are pessimistic, up from 50% in the spring survey.
Continuing a trend from the spring, more than half of the respondents to the summer survey said they expect to increase their workforces over the next 12 months, by an average of 7%. ◆