Detroit disaster an anomaly for U.S. manufacturing

By James B. Kelleher - Analysis

CHICAGO (Reuters) - If there is any good news in this week's bankruptcy of General Motors Corp GMGMQ.PK, and of Chrysler's on April 30, it is this: the problems of carmakers say little about the health of the broader manufacturing sector.

In fact, U.S.-based goods producers are in better shape than ever before, analysts say, though they have not escaped unscathed from the current global economic downturn.

Indeed, a survey of the U.S. industrial landscape not only provides a reassuring portrait of the nation's manufacturers but says a lot about what is in store for the trimmed-down U.S. carmakers if their court-supervised restructurings work out.

"There is a lot of dynamism in U.S. manufacturing," says Sunil Chopra at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

"One can look at the mistakes of GM and Chrysler -- or you can look at the companies that have done it well."

Tom Murphy, the head of the manufacturing practice at the consulting firm RSM McGladrey, agrees.

"The U.S. still manufacturers more than any other country in the world," Murphy says. "We're just making different things than we made in the past and we're making them differently. That's not going away just because of what's happened in the automotive industry."

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