The Future of Manufacturing Project |
Over the past several decades, globalization in the global manufacturing ecosystem has driven more change and impacted the prosperity of more companies, nations and people than at any time since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.
Nations around the world have taken part in and benefited from the rapid globalization of industry and expansion of manufacturing. Globalization of manufacturing has also been a key driver of higher-value job creation and a rising standard of living for the growing middle class in emerging nation economies. This has dramatically changed the nature of competition between emerging and developed nations as well as between companies.
Video posted with permission from the World Economic Forum.
To investigate how globalization will continue to shape manufacturing, the World Economic Forum’s Mobility Industries team in January 2011 initiated the “Future of Manufacturing” project to address how the global manufacturing ecosystem is evolving. The project explored the pivotal drivers of change, today and in the future, in order to generate insights and a platform for informed dialogue between senior business leaders and policymakers.
The project team, made up of manufacturing industry experts from the World Economic Forum and Deloitte LLP utilized a combination of primary and secondary research including an extensive review of key academic and industry literature, interviews with more than 30 manufacturing business, academia, and policy leaders, and numerous Task Force conference calls. In addition, industry, policy, and academic stakeholders provided valuable input to the report during seven face-to-face global workshops.
Read the report
The final report, The future of manufacturing: Opportunities to drive economic growth, explains that challenges in talent, innovation, infrastructure, and energy consumption are what countries and companies in the manufacturing industry must prepare to face in the coming years.
Which companies and countries will come out on top? Those that can attract, develop and retain the highest skilled talent, those that innovate to stay ahead of competition, and those that can find clean energy strategies and effective energy policies.
The key to success in these areas will be collaboration between governments and private sectors. With competition increasing for so many resources and capabilities—and with the prosperity of nations hanging in the balance—policymakers will be actively looking for the right combination of trade, tax, labor, energy, education, science, technology, and industrial policy levers to generate the best possible future for their citizens.
About Deloitte’s Global Manufacturing Competitiveness initiative
Over the last several years, Deloitte has collaborated with a number of organizations committed to manufacturing competitiveness on both a country and international level.
Through these collaborations and through additional primary and secondary research conducted by Deloitte, we have been able to develop a deep level of insight on this critical topic and what manufacturing organizations are doing to tackle this complex issue. Through our regular surveys and our ongoing discussions with senior business, academic and policy leaders, Deloitte is at the forefront of helping the stakeholders in the manufacturing ecosystem think through tough business challenges and how to work together in improving manufacturing competitiveness.
For more information, visit www.deloitte.com/us/competitiveness.
As used in this document, 'Deloitte' means Deloitte LLP. Please see www.deloitte.com/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of Deloitte LLP and its subsidiaries. Certain services may not be available to attest clients under the rules and regulations of public accounting.
The future of manufacturing: Opportunities to drive economic growth
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