I have been doing a survey on what organizations are doing with SharePoint. There were three questions, the second of which was an industry classification. For some industries, I received enough responses to give an industry breakdown.

Here is the chart for Manufacturing (19 responses):

In comparison to the Overall Analysis:

• The top two areas for manufacturing organizations with SharePoint are “Supporting team collaboration” and “Publishing Intranet content.” This is the same as for the overall base, but in both cases, a great proportion of manufacturing organizations are currently using these capabilities (by 10% points in both areas). The third most used area of SharePoint is “Providing document management services,” and while this is the same as for the overall, it’s about 15% less for manufacturing.
• “Creating business applications” is the 6th most common area for the overall base, but the 4th most common for the manufacturing respondents.
• The largest growth areas for manufacturing over the next 12 months are “Enabling workflow processes” (to double from the current proportion) and “Powering enterprise search” (to almost double from the current proportion). Third place goes to “Providing document management services.” In both areas, the 12 month forecast will see manufacturing organizations ahead of the overall base.
• Across the overall base, there were some respondents who said they would “never” use SharePoint for each of the areas surveyed. In comparison, respondents from manufacturing organizations only said this about three areas: “Publishing Internet Web Sites” (10%), “Encouraging social collaboration” (5%) and “Providing business intelligence and insight” (again 5%).

You can see the Overall Analysis based on 239 responses.