As you may have already noticed, a lot of our posts this past week or so have been focused both on looking back at 2013, and at looking forward to next year.

In doing both of those things, we can draw a couple of conclusions: one, that 2013 was a great year for manufacturing all-around, and two, that we have very high hopes for manufacturing in 2014.

Those high hopes carried over into our goals for manufacturing students in 2014 that we linked above, and luckily, it turns out that our predictions going into next year are actually very correct.

A number of manufacturing analysts and experts have been spending the past few weeks predicting how things will look for manufacturing in 2014, and their predictions all look very good. Here are a few of the high points from some of the reports about 2014 that have surfaced over these last few weeks:

• The Institute of Supply Chain Management  “69 percent of survey respondents expect revenues to be greater in 2014 than in 2013.” Manufacturers are especially optimistic about the second half of 2014, and in terms of specific numbers, the ISM “expects a 4.4 percent net increase in overall revenues for 2014.”
• According to , “A rising tide of positive factors bodes well for a rebound in the manufacturing sector.” Many manufacturing firms going into 2014 have low debt, are very profitable, and have high utilization rates, all positives looking towards the new year. MAPI notes that the outlook improves even more going into 2015 if everything continues on according to plan.
• And finally, , in 2013, “Consumer-driven manufacturing growth will be relatively stable and supported by surprisingly robust employment growth.” Many different manufacturing sectors–from high-tech industrial production (computers and electronics products) to cars–are expected to improve moving into the future.

It doesn’t take much to see the writing on the wall: manufacturing is in a very good place headed into 2014. Because of stability coming out of 2013, continued recovery of the global economy, and other industry-specific factors like low debt and increased consumer spending, manufacturers have a strong foundation as we all move forward through 2014.

It’s not just us, then, who are hopeful about manufacturing’s future, although we certainly believe that manufacturing will continue to grow as time goes on, regaining its spot as the foundation of the American economy. We’re all in this together, and we’re all very excited as we wrap up the end of 2013.

—

photo credit: via