MAPI — Manufacturers Alliance News and Reports — Quarterly Economic and Manufacturing Report and More

Issues in the Brief

Supply Chain Integration Leaving Value on the Table
The business leaders MAPI surveyed say cultural and operational incompatibility are the common reasons for a lack of post-acquisition supply chain synergy, not poor estimates. Learn how a targeted analysis of the acquiring company, not just acquired company, can prevent integration headaches.

What’s the Key to Increasing Productivity Growth Again?
While some experts believe that US productivity growth might be higher than government estimates suggest, it is clear that we are stagnating, particularly in the factory sector. He finds through some original research and analysis that innovation, capital investment and education are the three most important drivers of productivity growth.

Book Review: ‘Originals’ and the Quest for Unconventional Ideas
“Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World,” a new book by Wharton professor Adam Grant, is a useful springboard for thinking about encouraging creativity and breaking free from default thinking. Compelling anecdotes from practices at the CIA, Bridgewater, Kodak and Segway as well as Grant’s research-backed advice make the book a worthwhile read for professionals whose work requires creativity and working with creative people.

Manufacturing Strategy Survey
MAPI recently polled members of the Manufacturing Council to understand what other manufacturers perceive as the current state and future needs of their manufacturing processes to ensure competitiveness over the next five to 15 years.  The survey was broke down into two parts, current state and future state.  Some of the key findings are as follows:

Economic Update

Productivity Dynamics in U.S. Manufacturing
Productivity growth in the computer and electronic products subsector, once the principal driver of productivity performance in the manufacturing sector, has experienced significant waning in recent years. Consequently, the U.S. manufacturing productivity outlook has become murky. This is a challenging trend for our society, because increased productivity growth helps lift living standards. The good news is that empirical evidence put forth in this paper shows that innovation and capital investment play a key role in accelerating multifactor productivity growth (i.e., output per unit of a combined set of inputs including labor, materials, and capital) in a wide range of manufacturing industries.

Time to Restore a Balanced, Rules-Based Multilateral Trading System
The rules-based multilateral trade and financial system created at Bretton Woods in 1944 has been crumbling over the past decade. The WTO trading system to reduce trade barriers on a reciprocal, most-favored-nation basis has been replaced by a spreading network of bilateral and regional preferential trade agreements. And far more threatening, the IMF financial system, centered on convertible, non-manipulated exchange rates, has been undermined by rampant exchange rate mercantilism, principally by China and other Asian nations.

Economic Update [Video] : Productivity Dynamics in U.S. Manufacturing
In this seven-minute video, Cliff describes his analysis of US manufacturing productivity growth, reveals industry rankings for labor productivity growth and discusses how industries’ interconnected performance can inform policy efforts to stimulate growth.

Quarterly Forecast for U.S. Economic and Manufacturing Growth
Slides from Chief Economist Dan Meckstroth’s discussion of the overall outlook for the U.S. economy, with particular emphasis on the manufacturing sector, for 2016 and 2017.