January U.S. manufacturing technology orders totaled $341.2 million according to AMT – The Association For Manufacturing Technology. This total, as reported by companies participating in the USMTO program, was down 32.9 percent from December and down 4.8 percent compared to January 2014.

“To understand why we saw this drop in orders for January, December 2014 saw a sharp increase in sales," said Douglas K. Woods, AMT president. "This was driven by many end-of-year orders that had been rushed through in order to qualify for tax rebate provisions that were enacted at the last minute for 2014."

Northeast Region

January manufacturing technology orders in the Northeast Region totaled $86.8 million, 2.2 percent higher than the $84.9 million total for December.

Southeast Region

At $26.3 million, January manufacturing technology orders in the Southeast Region were down 29.4 percent when compared with January a year ago.

North Central-East Region

North Central-East Region manufacturing technology orders in January totaled $93.9 million, down 43.2 percent from December’s $165.5 million but 10.5 percent higher than the January 2014 total.

North Central-West Region

With a January total of $57.1 million, North Central-West Region manufacturing technology orders were down 25.5 percent from December’s $76.7 million but up 16.7 percent from last January.