H. Yoo
Research expert covering South Korea
Machine tool industry worldwide - statistics & facts
Since the beginning of enlightenment age, the replacement of handwork through machine tools improved the efficiency and productivity throughout the industrial revolutions. Even though the type of machine tools have evolved over time, the market for machine tools reinforced its position globally with an increasing demand from industrial organizations to automate or improve production processes. On the aggregate level, the machine tools market is transformed into becoming one of the most important submarkets of industrial production. For instance, the world machine tool demand more than doubled during the last decade only, reaching roughly 181 billion U.S. dollars in 2019. Despite high usefulness of machine tools for industrial production, only a handful of countries are specialized in manufacturing machine tools. This is mostly because of the high capital and know-how intensity of machine tool manufacturing operations. In 2020, China, Germany, and Japan were the leading countries in the production of machine tools based on production value.
