Mechanical engineering is rightly attributed to the main branch of industrial production, which affects the development of other areas of human economic activity.
In developed countries, the share of mechanical engineering in the gross national product is quite high - up to 30-35%. The peculiarity of modern mechanical engineering is high quality, competitiveness, and diversity. Therefore, the share of products manufactured at mechanical engineering enterprises, and then exported to the USA, Sweden, Germany, reaches 48%, and Japan - up to 65%. Mechanical engineering has a generally accepted structure, which includes several main industries.
General engineering
This includes the production of machine tools, means of production. Germany, Japan, the United States, England, Switzerland are recognized as the recognized leaders in heavy engineering, which includes the manufacture of equipment for mines, metallurgy. Developing countries (India, Brazil, Taiwan, South Korea) produce no more than 10% of all products. Machine-tool building is developed in Italy, Japan, USA, Russia. Almost all companies related to heavy engineering are located closer to ferrous metallurgy enterprises; for example, in Russia it is the Urals, in Poland - Silesia, in the USA - the north-east of the country.
Electrical industry
The leading position in the electrical industry in recent years has been occupied by the electronic industry, whose products are needed in almost any industry. The volume of annually sold products of this type reaches 1 trillion. dollars. At the same time, half of it is personal computers, electronic machines, 30% is electronic components (microcircuits, processors, hard drives, etc.), 20% is consumer electronics. The main direction of development of the latter is miniaturization, quality improvement and an increase in the service life. The leaders of the electronics industry are Japan, the USA, and South Korea.
Transport engineering
Automotive engineering is one of the most developed parts of the industry here. Approximately 50 million cars and trucks are produced in the world every year. The usual way of locating automobile enterprises is “cluster”, when the headquarters of the company is located in the center, while specialized firms supplying plastic, metal, dyes, rubber, etc. are concentrated around. The leading positions in the industry belong to the USA, Japan, Germany, Italy. Developing countries are increasingly involved in shipbuilding; for example, the share of South Korea, Japan today accounts for almost 50% of all manufactured sea vessels.
Agricultural engineering
Enterprises producing agricultural machinery are located in the world's most important agricultural regions. At the same time, countries that have reached the highest degree of mechanization are now reducing the production of equipment, focusing on increasing the technological capabilities of existing units. Leadership is gradually shifting to developing countries. But so far ahead is Japan with 150,000 tractors per year (the first positions are due to the production of mini-tractors), then India (100,000) and the third place for the USA (about 100,000).
