Machinery Orders MoM

Machinery Orders MoM is the monthly percent change in Machinery Orders, the Cabinet Office (CAO) survey of order books at 280 machinery makers. The Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI, the Cabinet Office research arm) has run it since April 1987 across major machinery sectors in Japan. Totals are a simple sum of orders reported by firms chosen as of 1985, covering over 80 of every 100 of sector output. It tracks orders received, a leading view of machinery capital investment, not shipments or spending itself.

Makers report orders received during each calendar month by post and online, and the Cabinet Office checks and tabulates the replies. Results appear monthly about 6 weeks after the reference month at 8:50 Japan Standard Time. Each release brings headline text, Chart-1 totals, Chart-2 core, Table-1 sectors, Table-2 industries, history files, and schedule links, with seasonal adjustments revised each January. Quarter-end releases add the maker-based next quarter forecast; order changes count in the month they occur and can show a minus sign.

Core results move with demand from each buyer group, while large ship and power orders can swing the total.

• Core orders: private orders excluding ships and electric power firms, the steady forward investment signal.
• Private-sector manufacturing: orders from domestic private manufacturers by industry.
• Private-sector non-manufacturing: orders from domestic private non-manufacturers by industry.
• Governments: orders from transport, defence, national and local bodies.
• From overseas: export-bound orders, even when reordered at home.
• Through agencies: orders via traders, builders, and leasing firms when the end user is unclear.

In September 2023, released 16 November 2023, total orders rose 15.1% on a seasonally adjusted monthly basis, while core orders rose only 1.4%. For July to September 2023, total orders rose 3.4% from the prior quarter while core orders fell 1.8%. The next quarter forecast saw total orders down 4.7% and core orders up 0.5%. The lesson is that a surging total can hide a soft core, so readers track the core for the investment trend.

1. Report orders: each maker reports orders received by machine type and buyer, excluding consumption tax, a levy on sales. Mobile phones left the survey in April 2011, and steel structures, bearings, wires and cables stay outside orders by user.
2. Add up: the Cabinet Office sums replies directly with no scaling to wider population.
3. Isolate core: subtract ship orders and electric power buyer orders from private orders.
4. Adjust seasons: apply the X-11 method of X-12-ARIMA, a standard seasonal correction program, with sigma limits, the outlier cutoffs, of 2.0 and 3.0. RegARIMA checks cover the main-sector series.
5. Find monthly change: divide the move from the prior month seasonally adjusted value by that prior value and multiply by 100. In symbols: MoM = 100 * (SA_t - SA_{t-1}) / SA_{t-1}. Quarter-on-quarter works the same way on quarterly totals.
6. Example: seasonally adjusted core orders were 840.0 billion yen in August and 852.9 billion in September. The change is 100 times 12.9 divided by 840.0, about 1.5%.