State of the Industry 2009

Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM)
Dennis Slater, president

What legislation AEM is working on?

Right now the highway bill is a big issue. The last highway bill expired Sept. 30th. We’ve been working around the clock on our Start Us Up USA! campaign.

AEM and AED are doing this together. We’re trying to get people to understand that it’s a recession for the country, but in our industry it’s a depression. The auto industry has manufacturing jobs down 16%, construction is down 37%. As a market we’ve lost 550,000 jobs in construction. Our biggest problem is market uncertainty.

The key part of regulations is to look at what is really doable. I think industry really wants to cooperate with this. They do want cleaner air, they do want more efficient machines and safer machines.

Have you made progress on the Transportation Bill?

The biggest thing when talking to people was they hadn’t heard the message. They didn’t hear about all of the jobs that were lost. They didn’t hear that market uncertainty is going to create a problem. They thought they could extend their current bill 18 months and “kick the can down the street a little farther” and thought it’d be okay, but really it won’t.

I think they also understand the manufacturing base of their individual states is going to be hurt drastically by this.

What role will AEM play to assist in the forward progress of the industry?

Because of the way the economy has been, we look at the association and think “How can we help our members get business?” That’s really our vision of what the association should do.

One is public policy, where before we worked in a lot of coalitions and sort of behind the scenes getting things done. Now we’ve decided for the equipment side of this we need to get in front and be bold thinkers and take lead positions and represent our own views.

Another is our statistics program. They know what their market share is in the U.S., what is it in China, Russia, or Brazil? Right now we’re developing programs so they can figure out the world market. If you’re a manufacturer for a product and you only sell in the U.S., but you want to go to China which is a huge market, you want to know how many trenchers they even use over there. Or is trenchers even a market? Market identification and market share data.

When do you foresee the recovery?

Until you have some market certainty in the housing market and the credit issues get resolved there, I think it’s going to be very slow coming back on the housing side. Until you get the construction industry back involved with the highway bill, and get them employed again, it’s going to be hard for the economy to be strong.

However, I think the companies have reacted well. Their efficiencies are what are helping the bottom line now, not sales. Sooner or later, sales will come back, too.

Agriculture is fundamentally stronger. The world is getting bigger, there are more people to feed. Agriculture is well placed for that. On the energy side, everything is dipping their way with biofuels.

Mining long-term is always going to be a good market. As China’s economy gets going again, which it is, they’re going to have a high demand for product and they’re going to need steel and other resources to build those products.

AEM provides public policy (legislation to regulation that protects the market place or defends the points of views reflected in its industries); tradeshows; market data; and technical standards to its members.

» Read full interview with Dennis Slater, president.

National Fluid Power Association (NFPA)
Eric Lanke, executive director

How do members play an active role with NFPA?