With annual revenues of nearly $13 billion, the market for economic consulting services is only slightly larger than the U.S. market for machine tools. Economic consultants analyze changing market conditions and make forecasts to help business leaders make decisions and prepare for the future. The first step in this process is often to assemble a relevant data series that can be used to track a company’s performance. While a firm’s data on their own sales is readily available, it is often a challenge to assemble data for the total market that is granular enough to be actionable in real time. Trade associations can effectively meet this need by leveraging their members’ collective knowledge and data to develop market metrics extremely cost-effectively. This article will analyze the data collected by AMT – The Association For Manufacturing Technology and their relevance to broader economic measures.
History
AMT was founded in 1902 as the National Machine Tool Builders Association (NMTBA). One primary reason for its formation was to gather data on the industry to help inform business decisions.
The statistics gathered by NMTBA were published in the biennial Economic Handbook of the Machine Tool Industry. In the early 1990s, NMTBA and the American Machine Tool Distributors’ Association (AMTDA) began projects to improve their statistical programs, which resulted in them collaborating to create the U.S. Machine Tool Consumption report. At the same time, NMTBA changed its name to AMT to reflect the full catalog of technologies contributing to modern manufacturing. In the summer of 2011, the statistical program was renamed the U.S. Manufacturing Technology Orders (USMTO) report to reflect the wider array of technologies captured and the fact that the market for machinery was measured at the time of order, not shipment. Shortly after that, AMT and AMTDA merged, creating an association to benefit both builders and distributors of manufacturing technology.
During the evolution of its statistical program, AMT developed two other programs to measure other aspects of the manufacturing technology market. In 2004, the Advanced Workholding Technologies report began publishing statistics on demand for workholding in both the domestic and export markets. Almost a decade later, in 2012, AMT partnered with the U.S. Cutting Tool Institute to publish statistics on cutting tool shipments under the Cutting Tool Market Report (CTMR).
Data and Trends
With a robust history of data spanning nearly three decades, AMT’s statistical programs offer the most frequent, accurate, and applicable information on the manufacturing technology market. Looking at the correlations between the series, the increases in the amount of machinery ordered, measured in order value by USMTO, tend to lead cutting tools and workholding by about six months. This is confirmed by a visual inspection of the data, where the values of cutting tool shipments and workholding orders tend to peak about two quarters after machinery orders peak.
Broader economic meaning can also be extrapolated from these data series based on their trends. For instance, shipments of cutting tools, measured in value by CTMR, very strongly correlate with industrial production in the same period. Since these series move concurrently, we can infer that additional orders of machinery will increase industrial production after approximately six months.
Building Your Foundation
The data from the statistical programs administered by AMT can be the foundation of any robust analysis or forecast for companies in the manufacturing technology industry. The machinery, tooling, workholding, and other manufacturing technology built and sold by AMT members is an integral part of modern manufacturing, whose market trends can offer insight into many other aspects of the economy. The first step to understanding these trends, however, is assembling the right data.
To learn more about AMT’s statistical programs and to see if you are eligible to participate and receive monthly market data, you can submit a research request via the AMT website. For a more comprehensive look at the manufacturing technology industry, including economic forecasts, market data analysis, and customer industry outlooks, register now for MTForecast 2025, the industry’s premier economic conference.
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