Global manufacturing rankings over the past 30 years

A great infographic on the movement (or lack thereof) of global manufacturing rankings over the past thirty years.

I know the point of a blog is to offer insights and opinions to readers to digest and discuss, but in this post I'd just like to let a graphic speak for itself, which I've sourced from a great report from the McKinsey Global Institute called "Manufacturing the future: The next era of global growth and innovation". The Report provides a wealth of information on the big global players in manufacturing and how their market share in various sectors has grown or eroded over the past 30 years.

Everyone likes a list with country rankings and below is a graphic from the Report outlining the global rankings of developing economies over the past 30 years. 

For me, a couple of things stood out to me from the 1980-2010 rankings:

US - static

Germany - slight decline

Japan - slight rise and fall

UK - moderate decline

France - moderate decline

Italy - overall static

China - substantial increase

Brazil - moderate increase (but what's with the hiccup in 2000?)

Spain - moderate-significant decline

Canada - recent moderate decline

Australia, Netherlands, Argentina, Turkey, Taiwan - only brief appearances

India - substantial increase

South Korea obviously has made a substantial increase in ranking between 1990-2010, but look at the emergence of Russia and Indonesia in 2010. It will be interesting to see if they have longevity over the next thirty years. I'll come back then and let you know.

White Paper: Capability drivers for Queensland manufacturing

While the impact of the GFC for Australia manufacturers was less severe than first thought, the industry experienced an overall decline as a contribution to Australia’s GDP between 2005-06 and 2009-10 was 0.8%, falling from 9.5% to 8.7%.

The issue of manufacturing competitiveness has reached a seminal turning point for the industry in terms of its ability to remain competitive. Professor Goran Roos, former Thinker in Residence for the South Australian Government and current Chairman of the Advanced Manufacturing Council in Adelaide, in his 2011 Manufacturing into the Future Report, asserts the GFC changed the competitive environment for Australian manufacturing from a low-cost competitive environment to a high-cost one.

As a result, manufacturers need to realign themselves with some of key sources for competitive advantage in this new environment. Roos contends that these come from:

• innovation which is not limited to technology but also includes design and organisational innovation
• repositioning to leverage opportunities in renewable and alternative energy technologies
• unique opportunities to access resource projects and the global supply chain

This White Paper focuses on the third opportunity proposed by Roos – the ability of manufacturers (suppliers) to increase their capability so they are able to better compete for access to resource-related projects. The suppliers examined for this paper are based in Queensland, Australia.

Click here to access the White Paper.