HANNOVER, Germany: With nearly a decade of hindsight, German manufacturers find they can look back on the painful opening years of the millennium with a certain degree of satisfaction.

Then, "Made in Germany" was less a label connoting quality than a millstone around their necks that suggested high prices and mystifying engineering. Labor costs in Germany, the largest economy in Europe, had spun out of control, and German companies had been slow to head for Eastern Europe and Asia - places that looked like the true future of manufacturing.

Turning bolts, Germans were told - often by other Germans - had no future in Germany. The persistence of heavy manufacturing symbolized the country's inability or unwillingness to transform itself into a modern, services-oriented economy like the United States or Britain, two oft-used yardsticks.

Today, the manufacturing sector in Germany is growing as a proportion of the country's total economic output, and Germany looks set to outpace far larger economies like China and the United States as the world's largest merchandise exporter for the fourth year running.