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2010 Machine Shop Market Profile Part 1

It is 2010, and in the movie world, that is “the year we make contact.”  If you remember the sequel to the classic Stanley Kubrick movie of Arthur C. Clarke’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” you’ll realize things haven’t turned out quite as predicted.

By Doug Kaufman

Of course, Hollywood is always making predictions about the future that don’t come true. Where are the colonies on the Moon? Cures for all major diseases?  And what about those flying cars we’ve been promised?

This being real life, bold predictions can be fun to anticipate, but it’s the little changes that often have the biggest impact on our daily lives. Over time, a small drop of water can destroy stone – likewise, small changes can have a large effect on your business as well.

For more than two decades, Engine Builder magazine has tracked those changes to this industry by surveying the same machine shop/custom engine rebuilder (CER) population. Though the numbers, like the industry, aren’t as strong and robust as we remember from the past, the good news is, contact between shop owner and customer has continued, and the resulting engines are used for basic transportation, business operations and management, racing and performance applications and everything in between.

Because of the twenty-plus years of data we’ve collected, we believe the information in this study is the most reliable data available for tracking trends in the production of engines, cylinder heads and crankshafts, as well as specific business data.

The data generated for this year’s Machine Shop Market Profile was collected through survey questionnaires sent to the machine shop/custom engine rebuilding membership of the AERA. Four different questionnaires, consisting of four pages each, were developed to obtain the information contained in our profile.

Each questionnaire was mailed to one-quarter of AERA’s rebuilding membership, selected on a random-start Nth-name basis. A total of 1,557 appropriate usable outgoing questionnaires were sent out in early January.

A total of 140 completed questionnaires were returned,  resulting in a return rate of 9%. Analysis of the data was completed by Babcox Market Research.

The survey information reflects data for production year 2009. Part 1 of this two-part profile includes data on monthly production of engine blocks and cylinder heads, broken out by engine size as well as by gas and diesel configurations, crankshafts, core sourcing, shop equipment ownership and purchasing, and total production time spent in specific engine building areas.

Overall, the transportation industry has taken shots to the chin over the past couple of years. Engine builders have been feeling those blows for years. How are we doing?

Download a viewable pdf of the 2010 Machine Shop Market Profile Part 1