Who It's For

Who is Industry Economics & Competitiveness designed for?

Four types of organizations use this product regularly, each for different but complementary reasons.

Business owners and investors use it to evaluate countries as potential manufacturing locations — comparing how a target country ranks across labor costs, energy, logistics, and margins before committing to a deeper feasibility study. It's the structured pre-screening layer before expensive project development begins.

Strategy and planning teams at industrial companies use it to monitor how the competitive landscape shifts month to month. A country that was a strong location for Polymers manufacturing last year may look different today — and this product tracks those shifts continuously.

Engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) firms, developers, and contractors use it to calibrate the cost assumptions built into project bids and capital budgets. The Tools in the Advanced and Ultimate plans — particularly Plant Location Factors and the Plant Construction Cost Index — give these teams a structured, monthly-updated basis for cross-country cost comparisons.

Procurement and supply chain teams use it to assess the structural cost environment of the countries where their suppliers operate — tracking how labor costs, energy prices, and logistics conditions are evolving, and what that means for their supplier base's competitiveness over time.

Public sector users — analysts at development banks, government ministries, and international organizations — use it to benchmark a country's competitiveness against peer economies and identify which structural factors most affect its manufacturing attractiveness.

The common thread: every user type needs to understand how a country compares to the rest of the world — not just what it looks like in isolation.

Is this useful for evaluating where to expand manufacturing?

Yes — site selection and expansion screening are among the most direct use cases for this product. If your organization is deciding which country to prioritize for a new production facility, a sourcing shift, or a manufacturing partnership, this analysis gives you a structured, monthly-updated baseline for the comparison.

Here's what the product contributes at each stage of that kind of decision:

• Initial screening — rank 33 countries by overall manufacturing attractiveness for your specific sector, and surface the strongest candidates without commissioning custom research on each location.
• Driver analysis — identify which cost factors are structural advantages or constraints in each candidate country. Understand the why behind a country's ranking, not just its position.
• Ongoing monitoring — once a target country is identified, track monthly whether its competitive position is strengthening or eroding. Cost dynamics change; the analysis keeps you current.

What this product doesn't replace: detailed project feasibility studies, on-the-ground regulatory assessment, and plant-specific engineering estimates. It's the structured benchmark layer that helps you decide where to focus deeper investigation before those studies begin.

How do engineering and project development teams use this?

EPC firms, project developers, and contractors use this product primarily through the Tools included in the Advanced and Ultimate plans — and through the broader operating environment data that informs project cost assumptions.

The two tools most relevant to project teams:

• Plant Location Factors — monthly multipliers that convert a plant construction cost estimate from one country to another, using the US as the baseline. If you have a cost estimate built for one location and need to quickly understand what a comparable plant would cost in another country, these factors give you that conversion on a consistent, monthly-updated basis.
• Plant Construction Cost Index — a monthly index tracking how capital costs for manufacturing plant construction are evolving in each country, with a 6-month forecast. Useful for adjusting historical cost estimates to present values and for calibrating near-term budget assumptions.

Beyond the tools, the Foundation Layer of the report — covering construction labor costs, logistics infrastructure, and the macroeconomic environment — provides a structured view of operating conditions that feeds into project execution risk assessments.

Can procurement and sourcing teams use this?

Yes, though the use case is more about understanding the structural cost environment of supplier countries than tracking commodity prices directly.

For procurement and supply chain professionals, the most relevant applications are:

• Supplier country assessment — understand how the countries where your key suppliers operate rank on labor costs, energy, logistics, and trade access. If a country's manufacturing cost position is eroding, that can eventually affect supplier pricing, capacity, or reliability.
• Cost driver monitoring — the Foundation Layer tracks manufacturing labor, energy, logistics, and macroeconomic conditions monthly. For teams managing sourcing relationships across multiple countries, this provides an ongoing view of how structural costs are shifting.
• Sourcing risk signals — changes in a country's rank on freight costs, tariff environment, or industrial margins can surface early signals of sourcing risk before they show up in supplier quotes.

This product covers the country-level lens: how attractive is each country as a manufacturing environment for your suppliers' industry. For commodity price tracking, use Primary Commodity Prices. For production cost benchmarks, use Commodity Production Costs.

Is this relevant for government or public sector analysts?

Yes. Government agencies, development banks, ministries of industry, and international organizations use this product to benchmark a country's manufacturing competitiveness against the global universe of 33 peer economies.

Common applications:

• A national development agency tracks how its country ranks across manufacturing labor, energy, logistics, and industrial margins — month over month — to quantify which areas most constrain manufacturing attractiveness.
• A policy analyst preparing an investment climate assessment uses the standardized scoring to compare the country against regional peers and the global average.
• A development bank evaluating a country's readiness for industrial investment monitors whether structural conditions are improving or deteriorating relative to the 33-country baseline.

For public sector organizations that need to share reports across government departments or with external counterparts, the Ultimate plan includes the Third-Party Sharing rights required for that kind of distribution.

What decisions does this support — and what doesn't it replace?

This product is a benchmarking and monitoring tool. It gives you a structured, monthly-updated view of how countries compare as manufacturing environments — not a final decision engine.

What it supports well:

• Narrowing a long list of candidate countries to a shortlist based on comparative data
• Identifying which cost factors are structural strengths or weaknesses in a target location
• Tracking whether a country's competitive position is improving or deteriorating over time
• Calibrating cross-country CapEx assumptions using Plant Location Factors and the Construction Cost Index (Advanced and Ultimate plans)

What it doesn't replace:

• Project-specific feasibility studies with actual site selection, permitting, and on-ground cost modeling
• Commodity price tracking — use Primary Commodity Prices for that
• Production cost estimates for specific processes — use Commodity Production Costs for that
• Legal, regulatory, and tax advisory for a specific investment

The right frame: this product answers "which countries look most attractive for manufacturing in my sector, and how is that changing?" It gives you the structural intelligence to decide where to focus deeper investigation — not the investment decision itself.