International Machine Tool Industry Analysis

Abstract

The machine tool industry as part of the processing equipment sector, makes two important contributions to a country’s economy. First, it provides tools for all other industries, for instance the automotive industry and its suppliers, the aircraft, chemical and petroleum industries, civil and electrical engineering companies and for the machine tool industry itself. The performance of all other industries therefore depends directly on the machine tool industry’s innovativeness and competitiveness. New developments and ideas that originate in the research and development departments of machine tool builders are passed onto all industries that follow in the “production chain”. Second, in the machine tools built, years of accumulated knowledge of manufacturing processes, technology and innovation management are combined and made available to the machine tool users. These explain why a healthy machine tool industry is believed to be of far higher importance than the economic size of the machine tool sector suggests (see Finegold [1994b] and Wieandt [1994]).