This performance report for Industrial OEMs for the year 2020 is out. We sifted through the comprehensive set of statistics, from Jan 2020 to Dec 2020, published by census.gov and distilled the data for industrial manufacturing, and compared it with the previous year’s statistics.

The primary sub-sectors addressed are – HVAC Equipment, Industrial Machinery, Mining, Oil/Gas Field, Turbines, Generators, Power Transmission, Material Handling, and Construction Machinery.

Key Highlights:

• New orders dropped by 2.5% in 2020 as compared to last year.
• Though the shipments diminished by 4.3%, the level of inventory & unfilled orders reduced too, giving a mixed signal.
• Overall, the numbers are pointing towards reduced remand but improved inventory management. But that is not the case for all the sectors.
• Industrial Machinery manufacturing performed better amongst the pack, with 6% more shipments and a 3.5% decrease in unfilled orders as well as a 5% increase in new orders.
• Mining, Oil, and Gas Field Machinery has been hit hard by the Covid19 lockdowns & quarantines. The total shipments have decreased by more than 19%, and new orders diminished by 15.7%. A huge 11% drop in unfilled orders and a 12.5% drop in inventories reflects the impact of the lockdown as it put the businesses at a standstill.
• In the case of HVAC, the shipments and new orders have experienced a nominal hit of 2% and 1.3%, respectively, but it has managed to reduce its inventory by more than 6.6%.
• The same goes with the material handling equipment manufacturers in the case of inventory management. But they couldn’t keep the velocity with respect to shipments and new orders as they were hit by 5.4% and 4.7%, respectively.

Reference: https://www.census.gov/