Why is manufacturing becoming more competitive

When it comes to competitiveness, what differentiates the top global manufacturers from the rest? Learn the capabilities and attributes that help make top performers stand out—even when the bar continues to rise. NO one has to tell manufacturing company executives that it’s getting tougher to differentiate themselves and compete successfully—they feel the pressure every day. Rapid globalization, technological advancements, changing consumer preferences, and evolving government policies are reshaping the manufacturing industry, exponentially accelerating the pace of competition and continually raising the bar on company performance.

Still, some manufacturers consistently and convincingly outperform their peers (see sidebar “Why study high-performing manufacturers?”). How are they doing this? And what can “the rest” learn from “the best” to improve their own performance? This report provides executives with clear direction on what companies need to do to be high-performing manufacturers—now and in the future. For more than 25 years, we’ve been studying manufacturers to identify what sets apart high-performing companies (defined in the section “About the study”) from their competitors. We found that high performers focus carefully on the development of specific but evolving sets of manufacturing capabilities to differentiate themselves and succeed in the marketplace. These capabilities, when coupled together, are difficult for their competitors to replicate, and when executed well, they create long-term competitive advantage by generating greater customer loyalty, higher market share, and superior profitability.

About the study

As part of Deloitte’s ongoing collaboration with the US Council on Competitiveness on the Global Competitiveness in Manufacturing Initiative, we conducted a global study of manufacturing CEOs in 2010, 2013, and 2016. Together, these three studies received a total of over 1,600 CEO responses.

On a broad list of capabilities, we asked CEOs to rate their companies’ current competitiveness in each capability relative to their closest global rivals, as well as rate how important they thought each capability would be to staying competitive in the future. In order to remove the variations in rating among countries (due to culture), industry subsectors, and company revenue sizes, we normalized the data by country, industry, and size, and calculated current and future index scores for each of the capabilities on a 10–100 scale for both current competitiveness and future importance.

We separated the respondents’ companies into “high performers” and “other companies” (all other companies studied). High performers were identified on the basis of four parameters: the company’s actual profitability, its profitability when compared to its peers, whether the company met or exceeded its profitability goals, and the company’s performance on return on assets.

This classification methodology for selecting high performers showed that 30 percent of the high performers were in the top 10 percent of profitability relative to their primary global industry competitors, and four-fifths (81 percent) of the high performers were in the top third. Among the other companies, only 1 percent were in the top 10 percent of profitability, and only 9 percent were in the top third, relative to their primary global industry competitors. In addition, 25 percent of the high performers were in the top 10 percent on return on assets (ROA) relative to their primary global industry competitors; 74 percent of the high performers had ROAs in the top third. Among the other companies, only 1 percent had ROAs in the top 10 percent and only 5 percent had ROAs in the top third relative to their primary global industry competitors.

To dig deeper into the attributes of high-performing manufacturers, Deloitte collaborated with the US Council on Competitiveness to conduct a global survey of over 500 manufacturing C-suite executives in 2016. This report, which draws on the survey’s results, builds on the 2010 and 2013 editions of this survey and further extends the story of manufacturing competitiveness in the 21st century.

Even for high performers, it isn’t easy to continually excel in the dynamic, hypercompetitive global manufacturing industry. However, this study provides an operating framework to help C-suite executives decide “where to play and how to win.” Becoming a high performer requires a keen focus on acquiring needed capabilities, which not only change with time but also vary based on where a company chooses to play: in which markets, with which customers and consumers, in which channels, and in which product categories and services the company wants to compete. To determine how to win, company leaders should consider which capabilities will enable the organization to create unique value and consistently deliver that value to customers in a way that is distinct from competitors’ offerings

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