The modern course of Russia for a comprehensive modernization of the economy involves a solution a number of serious tasks, including: the development and production of new high-tech products that meet world standards; updating the material and technical base, that is, the introduction of new equipment, new materials, new technologies, including information; new forms of organization of production and labor, as well as raising the level of skills of specialists. For the machine-building complex of the country, which largely determines the development of the economy, modernization should ensure both quantitative and qualitative growth in production as a whole. Very topical is the need to improve the theory and practice of forming and monitoring the production potential of enterprises of the machine-building complex.