Manufacturing is the creation or
production of
goods with the help of
equipment,
labor,
machine
A machine is a physical system using Power (physics), power to apply Force, forces and control Motion, movement to perform an action. The term is commonly applied to artificial devices, such as those employing engines or motors, but also to na ...
s,
tools, and
chemical or
biological process
Biological processes are those processes that are vital for an organism to live, and that shape its capacities for interacting with its environment. Biological processes are made of many chemical reactions or other events that are involved in the ...
ing or
formulation
Formulation is a term used in various senses in various applications, both the material and the abstract or formal. Its fundamental meaning is the putting together of components in appropriate relationships or structures, according to a formul ...
. It is the essence of
secondary sector of the economy
In macroeconomics, the secondary sector of the economy is an economic sector in the three-sector theory that describes the role of manufacturing. It encompasses industries that produce a finished, usable product or are involved in construction. ...
. The term may refer to a range of
human activity, from
handicraft to
high-tech
High technology (high tech), also known as advanced technology (advanced tech) or exotechnology, is technology that is at the cutting edge: the highest form of technology available. It can be defined as either the most complex or the newest te ...
, but it is most commonly applied to
industrial design
Industrial design is a process of design applied to physical Product (business), products that are to be manufactured by mass production. It is the creative act of determining and defining a product's form and features, which takes place in advan ...
, in which
raw material
A raw material, also known as a feedstock, unprocessed material, or primary commodity, is a basic material that is used to produce goods, finished goods, energy, or intermediate materials that are feedstock for future finished products. As feedst ...
s from the
primary sector are transformed into
finished goods on a large scale. Such goods may be sold to other manufacturers for the production of other more complex products (such as
aircraft,
household appliances,
furniture
Furniture refers to movable objects intended to support various human activities such as seating (e.g., stools, chairs, and sofas), eating (tables), storing items, eating and/or working with an item, and sleeping (e.g., beds and hammocks). Fu ...
,
sports equipment or
automobiles
A car or automobile is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of ''cars'' say that they run primarily on roads, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport people instead of goods.
The year 1886 is regarded as ...
), or distributed via the
tertiary industry to
end user
In product development, an end user (sometimes end-user) is a person who ultimately uses or is intended to ultimately use a product. The end user stands in contrast to users who support or maintain the product, such as sysops, system administrat ...
s and
consumers (usually through
wholesalers, who in turn sell to
retailers, who then sell them to individual
customer
In sales, commerce, and economics, a customer (sometimes known as a client, buyer, or purchaser) is the recipient of a good, service, product or an idea - obtained from a seller, vendor, or supplier via a financial transaction or exchange for ...
s).
Manufacturing engineering is the field of engineering that designs and optimizes the manufacturing process, or the steps through which raw materials are transformed into a
final product. The manufacturing process begins with the
product design
Product design as a verb is to create a new product to be sold by a business to its customers. A very broad coefficient and effective generation and development of ideas through a process that leads to new products. Thus, it is a major aspect of n ...
, and
materials specification. These materials are then modified through manufacturing to become the desired product.
Modern manufacturing includes all intermediate processes involved in the production and integration of a product's components. Some industries, such as
semiconductor and
steel
Steel is an alloy made up of iron with added carbon to improve its strength and fracture resistance compared to other forms of iron. Many other elements may be present or added. Stainless steels that are corrosion- and oxidation-resistant ty ...
manufacturers, use the term fabrication instead.
The manufacturing sector is closely connected with the
engineering and
industrial design
Industrial design is a process of design applied to physical Product (business), products that are to be manufactured by mass production. It is the creative act of determining and defining a product's form and features, which takes place in advan ...
industries.
Etymology
The
Modern English word ''manufacture'' is likely derived from the
Middle French ''
manufacture
Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to a rang ...
'' ("process of making") which itself originates from the
Classical Latin ''
manū'' ("hand") and Middle French ''
facture'' ("making"). Alternatively, the English word may have been independently formed from the earlier English ''manufact'' ("made by human hands") and ''facture''. Its earliest usage in the English language was recorded in the mid-16th century to refer to the making of products by hand.
History and development
Prehistory and ancient history
Human ancestors have manufactured objects using stone and other tools since long before the emergence of ''
Homo sapiens'' approximately 200,000 years ago. The earliest methods of
stone tool
A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made either partially or entirely out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric (particularly Stone Ag ...
making, known as the
Oldowan "
industry", date back to at least 2.3 million years ago, with the earliest direct evidence of tool usage found in
Ethiopia within the
Great Rift Valley, dating back to 2.5 million years ago. To manufacture a stone tool, a "
core" of hard stone with specific flaking properties (such as
flint) was struck with a
hammerstone. This flaking produced sharp edges which could be used as tools, primarily in the form of
choppers or
scrapers.
These tools greatly aided the early humans in their
hunter-gatherer
A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, ...
lifestyle to form other tools out of softer materials such as bone and wood. The
Middle Paleolithic
The Middle Paleolithic (or Middle Palaeolithic) is the second subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. The term Middle Stone Age is used as an equivalent or a synonym for the Middle Paleoli ...
, approximately 300,000 years ago, saw the introduction of the
prepared-core technique
The prepared-core technique is a means of producing stone tools by first preparing common stone cores into shapes that lend themselves to knapping off flakes that closely resemble the desired tool and require only minor touch-ups to be usable.
...
, where multiple blades could be rapidly formed from a single core stone.
Pressure flaking, in which a wood, bone, or antler
punch could be used to shape a stone very finely was developed during the
Upper Paleolithic, beginning approximately 40,000 years ago. During the
Neolithic period, polished
stone tool
A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made either partially or entirely out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric (particularly Stone Ag ...
s were manufactured from a variety of hard rocks such as
flint,
jade
Jade is a mineral used as jewellery or for ornaments. It is typically green, although may be yellow or white. Jade can refer to either of two different silicate minerals: nephrite (a silicate of calcium and magnesium in the amphibole group of ...
,
jadeite
Jadeite is a pyroxene mineral with composition sodium, Naaluminium, Alsilicon, Si2oxygen, O6. It is hard (Mohs hardness of about 6.5 to 7.0), very tough, and dense, with a specific gravity of about 3.4. It is found in a wide range of colors, bu ...
, and
greenstone. The polished axes were used alongside other stone tools including
projectiles, knives, and scrapers, as well as tools manufactured from organic materials such as wood, bone, and antler.
Copper
smelting is believed to have originated when the technology of pottery
kilns allowed sufficiently high temperatures.
The concentration of various elements such as arsenic increase with depth in copper ore deposits and smelting of these ores yields
arsenical bronze, which can be sufficiently work hardened to be suitable for manufacturing tools.
Bronze
Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals, such as phosphorus, or metalloids such ...
is an alloy of copper with tin; the latter being found in relatively few deposits globally caused a long time to elapse before true tin bronze became widespread. During the
Bronze Age, bronze was a major improvement over stone as a material for making tools, both because of its mechanical properties like strength and ductility and because it could be cast in molds to make intricately shaped objects. Bronze significantly advanced shipbuilding technology with better tools and bronze nails, which replaced the old method of attaching boards of the hull with cord woven through drilled holes. The
Iron Age is conventionally defined by the widespread manufacturing of weapons and tools using iron and steel rather than bronze.
[Waldbaum, Jane C. ''From Bronze to Iron''. Gothenburg: Paul Astöms Förlag (1978): 56–58.] Iron smelting is more difficult than tin and copper smelting because smelted iron requires hot-working and can be melted only in specially designed furnaces. The place and time for the discovery of iron smelting is not known, partly because of the difficulty of distinguishing metal extracted from nickel-containing ores from hot-worked meteoritic iron.
During the growth of the ancient civilizations, many ancient technologies resulted from advances in manufacturing. Several of the six classic
simple machines
A simple machine is a mechanical device that changes the direction or magnitude of a force. In general, they can be defined as the simplest mechanisms that use mechanical advantage (also called leverage) to multiply force. Usually the term refer ...
were invented in Mesopotamia. Mesopotamians have been credited with the invention of the
wheel
A wheel is a circular component that is intended to rotate on an axle Bearing (mechanical), bearing. The wheel is one of the key components of the wheel and axle which is one of the Simple machine, six simple machines. Wheels, in conjunction wi ...
. The
wheel and axle mechanism first appeared with the
potter's wheel, invented in
Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) during the 5th millennium BC. Egyptian
paper made from
papyrus, as well as
pottery, were mass-produced and exported throughout the Mediterranean basin. Early construction techniques used by the Ancient Egyptians made use of bricks composed mainly of clay, sand, silt, and other minerals.
Medieval and early modern
The
Middle Ages witnessed new inventions, innovations in the ways of managing traditional means of production, and economic growth.
Papermaking
Papermaking is the manufacture of paper and cardboard, which are used widely for printing, writing, and packaging, among many other purposes. Today almost all paper is made using industrial machinery, while handmade paper survives as a speciali ...
, a 2nd-century Chinese technology, was carried to the Middle East when a group of Chinese papermakers were captured in the 8th century. Papermaking technology was spread to Europe by the
Umayyad conquest of Hispania. A paper mill was established in Sicily in the 12th century. In Europe the fiber to make pulp for making paper was obtained from linen and cotton rags.
Lynn Townsend White Jr.
Lynn Townsend White Jr. (April 29, 1907 – March 30, 1987) was an American historian. He was a professor of Middle Ages, medieval history at Princeton University, Princeton from 1933 to 1937, and at Stanford University, Stanford from 1937 to 194 ...
credited the spinning wheel with increasing the supply of rags, which led to cheap paper, which was a factor in the development of printing. Due to the casting of cannon, the
blast furnace
A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally pig iron, but also others such as lead or copper. ''Blast'' refers to the combustion air being "forced" or supplied above atmospheric ...
came into widespread use in France in the mid 15th century. The blast furnace had been used in China since the 4th century BC.
The
stocking frame
A stocking frame was a mechanical knitting machine used in the textiles industry. It was invented by William Lee of Calverton near Nottingham in 1589. Its use, known traditionally as framework knitting, was the first major stage in the mechan ...
, which was invented in 1598, increased a knitter's number of knots per minute from 100 to 1000.
First and Second Industrial Revolutions
The
Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Europe and the United States from 1760 to the 1830s. This transition included going from
hand production methods to
machine
A machine is a physical system using Power (physics), power to apply Force, forces and control Motion, movement to perform an action. The term is commonly applied to artificial devices, such as those employing engines or motors, but also to na ...
s, new
chemical manufacturing
The chemical industry comprises the companies that produce industrial chemicals. Central to the modern world economy, it converts raw materials (oil, natural gas, air, water, metals, and minerals) into more than 70,000 different products. The pla ...
and
iron production
Iron () is a chemical element with Symbol (chemistry), symbol Fe (from la, Wikt:ferrum, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 element, group 8 of the periodic table. It is, Abundance ...
processes, the increasing use of
steam power
A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force can be trans ...
and
water power, the development of
machine tools and the rise of the
mechanized factory system. The Industrial Revolution also led to an unprecedented rise in the rate of population growth.
Textiles were the dominant industry of the Industrial Revolution in terms of employment, value of output and
capital
Capital may refer to:
Common uses
* Capital city, a municipality of primary status
** List of national capital cities
* Capital letter, an upper-case letter Economics and social sciences
* Capital (economics), the durable produced goods used f ...
invested. The
textile industry was also the first to use modern production methods.
Rapid
industrialization
Industrialisation ( alternatively spelled industrialization) is the period of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an industrial society. This involves an extensive re-organisation of an econo ...
first began in Britain, starting with mechanized spinning in the 1780s,
with high rates of growth in steam power and iron production occurring after 1800.
Mechanized textile production spread from Great Britain to continental Europe and the United States in the early 19th century, with important centres of textiles, iron and
coal emerging
in Belgium and the United States and later textiles in France.
An economic recession occurred from the late 1830s to the early 1840s when the adoption of the Industrial Revolution's early innovations, such as mechanized spinning and weaving, slowed down and their markets matured. Innovations developed late in the period, such as the increasing adoption of locomotives, steamboats and steamships,
hot blast iron smelting and new technologies, such as the
electrical telegraph, were widely introduced in the 1840s and 1850s, were not powerful enough to drive high rates of growth. Rapid economic growth began to occur after 1870, springing from a new group of innovations in what has been called the
Second Industrial Revolution. These innovations included new
steel making processes,
mass-production,
assembly lines,
electrical grid
An electrical grid is an interconnected network for electricity delivery from producers to consumers. Electrical grids vary in size and can cover whole countries or continents. It consists of:Kaplan, S. M. (2009). Smart Grid. Electrical Power ...
systems, the large-scale manufacture of machine tools and the use of increasingly advanced machinery in steam-powered factories.
Building on improvements in vacuum pumps and materials research,
incandescent light bulbs became practical for general use in the late 1870s. This invention had a profound effect on the workplace because factories could now have second and third shift workers. Shoe production was mechanized during the mid 19th century. Mass production of
sewing machine
A sewing machine is a machine used to sew fabric and materials together with thread. Sewing machines were invented during the first Industrial Revolution to decrease the amount of manual sewing work performed in clothing companies. Since the inv ...
s and
agricultural machinery such as reapers occurred in the mid to late 19th century.
[.] The mass production of bicycles started in the 1880s.
Steam-powered factories became widespread, although the conversion from water power to steam occurred in England earlier than in the U.S.
Modern manufacturing
Electrification of factories, which had begun gradually in the 1890s after the introduction of the practical
DC motor
A DC motor is any of a class of rotary electrical motors that converts direct current (DC) electrical energy into mechanical energy. The most common types rely on the forces produced by induced magnetic fields due to flowing current in the coil ...
and the
AC motor, was fastest between 1900 and 1930. This was aided by the establishment of electric utilities with central stations and the lowering of electricity prices from 1914 to 1917.
Electric motors allowed more flexibility in manufacturing and required less maintenance than line shafts and belts. Many factories witnessed a 30% increase in output owing to the increasing shift to electric motors. Electrification enabled modern mass production, and the biggest impact of early mass production was in the manufacturing of everyday items, such as at the
Ball Brothers Glass Manufacturing Company, which electrified its
mason jar plant in
Muncie, Indiana
Muncie ( ) is an incorporated city and the county seat, seat of Delaware County, Indiana, Delaware County, Indiana. Previously known as Buckongahelas Town, named after the legendary Delaware Chief.http://www.delawarecountyhistory.org/history/docs ...
, U.S. around 1900. The new automated process used glass blowing machines to replace 210 craftsman glass blowers and helpers. A small electric truck was now used to handle 150 dozen bottles at a time whereas previously used hand trucks could only carry 6 dozen bottles at a time. Electric mixers replaced men with shovels handling sand and other ingredients that were fed into the glass furnace. An electric overhead crane replaced 36
day laborers for moving heavy loads across the factory.
Mass production was popularized in the late 1910s and 1920s by Henry Ford's
Ford Motor Company, which introduced electric motors to the then-well-known technique of chain or sequential production. Ford also bought or designed and built special purpose machine tools and fixtures such as multiple spindle
drill presses that could drill every hole on one side of an engine block in one operation and a multiple head
milling machine that could simultaneously machine 15 engine blocks held on a single fixture. All of these machine tools were arranged systematically in the production flow and some had special carriages for rolling heavy items into machining positions. Production of the
Ford Model T
The Ford Model T is an automobile that was produced by Ford Motor Company from October 1, 1908, to May 26, 1927. It is generally regarded as the first affordable automobile, which made car travel available to middle-class Americans. The relati ...
used 32,000 machine tools.
Lean manufacturing
Lean manufacturing is a production method aimed primarily at reducing times within the production system as well as response times from suppliers and to customers. It is closely related to another concept called just-in-time manufacturing ( ...
(also known as just-in-time manufacturing), was developed in Japan in the 1930s. It is a production method aimed primarily at reducing times within the production system as well as response times from suppliers and to customers.
[Shingo, Shigeo. 1985. ''A Revolution in Manufacturing: The SMED System''. Stamford, Connecticut: Productivity Press] It was introduced in Australia in the 1950s by the British Motor Corporation (Australia) at its Victoria Park plant in Sydney, from where the idea later migrated to Toyota. News spread to western countries from Japan in 1977 in two English-language articles: one referred to the methodology as the "Ohno system", after
Taiichi Ohno, who was instrumental in its development within Toyota. The other article, by Toyota authors in an international journal, provided additional details. Finally, those and other publicity were translated into implementations, beginning in 1980 and then quickly multiplying throughout the industry in the United States and other countries.
Industrial policy
Economics of manufacturing
Emerging technologies
Emerging technologies are technologies whose development, practical applications, or both are still largely unrealized. These technologies are generally new but also include older technologies finding new applications. Emerging technologies ar ...
have offered new growth methods in advanced manufacturing employment opportunities, for example in the
Manufacturing Belt in the
United States. Manufacturing provides important material support for national
infrastructure
Infrastructure is the set of facilities and systems that serve a country, city, or other area, and encompasses the services and facilities necessary for its economy, households and firms to function. Infrastructure is composed of public and priv ...
and also for
national defense.
On the other hand, most manufacturing processes may involve significant social and environmental costs. The clean-up costs of
hazardous waste
Hazardous waste is waste that has substantial or potential threats to public health or the environment. Hazardous waste is a type of dangerous goods. They usually have one or more of the following hazardous traits: ignitability, reactivity, co ...
, for example, may outweigh the benefits of a product that creates it. Hazardous materials may expose
workers to health risks. These costs are now well known and there is effort to address them by improving
efficiency
Efficiency is the often measurable ability to avoid wasting materials, energy, efforts, money, and time in doing something or in producing a desired result. In a more general sense, it is the ability to do things well, successfully, and without ...
, reducing waste, using
industrial symbiosis
Industrial symbiosis a subset of industrial ecology. It describes how a network of diverse organizations can foster eco-innovation and long-term culture change, create and share mutually profitable transactions—and improve business and technica ...
, and eliminating harmful chemicals.
The negative costs of manufacturing can also be addressed legally. Developed countries regulate manufacturing activity with
labor laws and
environmental laws. Across the globe, manufacturers can be subject to regulations and
pollution taxes to offset the
environmental costs of manufacturing activities.
Labor unions and
craft guilds have played a historic role in the negotiation of worker rights and wages. Environment laws and labor protections that are available in developed nations may not be available in the
third world.
Tort law and
product liability impose additional costs on manufacturing. These are significant dynamics in the ongoing process, occurring over the last few decades, of manufacture-based industries relocating operations to "developing-world" economies where the costs of production are significantly lower than in "developed-world" economies.
Finance
From a financial perspective, the goal of the manufacturing industry is mainly to achieve
cost benefits per unit produced, which in turn leads to cost reductions in product prices for the market towards
end customers. This relative
cost reduction
Cost reduction is the process used by companies to reduce their costs and increase their profits. Depending on a company’s services or products, the strategies can vary. Every decision in the product development process affects cost: design i ...
towards the market, is how manufacturing firms secure their
profit margins
Profit margin is a measure of profitability. It is calculated by finding the profit as a percentage of the revenue.
\text = =
There are 3 types of profit margins: gross profit margin, operating profit margin and net profit margin.
* Gross Prof ...
.
Safety
Manufacturing has unique health and safety challenges and has been recognized by the
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) as a priority industry sector in the
National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA) to identify and provide intervention strategies regarding occupational health and safety issues.
Manufacturing and investment
Surveys and analyses of trends and issues in manufacturing and investment around the world focus on such things as:
* The nature and sources of the considerable variations that occur cross-nationally in levels of manufacturing and wider industrial-economic growth;
* Competitiveness; and
* Attractiveness to foreign direct investors.
In addition to general overviews, researchers have examined the features and factors affecting particular key aspects of manufacturing development. They have compared production and investment in a range of Western and non-Western countries and presented case studies of growth and performance in important individual industries and market-economic sectors.
On June 26, 2009,
Jeff Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, called for the
United States to increase its manufacturing base employment to 20% of the workforce, commenting that the U.S. has outsourced too much in some areas and can no longer rely on the financial sector and consumer spending to drive demand.
[Bailey, David and Soyoung Kim (June 26, 2009]
GE's Immelt says U.S. economy needs industrial renewal
. ''UK Guardian''. Retrieved on June 28, 2009. Further, while U.S. manufacturing performs well compared to the rest of the U.S. economy, research shows that it performs poorly compared to manufacturing in other high-wage countries. A total of 3.2 million – one in six U.S. manufacturing jobs – have disappeared between 2000 and 2007. In the UK,
EEF the manufacturers organisation has led calls for the UK economy to be rebalanced to rely less on financial services and has actively promoted the manufacturing agenda.
Major manufacturing nations
According to the
United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO),
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
is the top manufacturer worldwide by 2019 output, producing 28.7% of the total global manufacturing output, followed by
United States,
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
,
Germany and
India.
UNIDO also publishes a Competitive Industrial Performance (CIP) Index, which measures the competitive manufacturing ability of different nations. The CIP Index combines a nation's gross manufacturing output with other factors like high-tech capability and the nation's impact on the world economy. Germany topped the 2020 CIP Index, followed by China,
South Korea, the United States and Japan.
List of countries by manufacturing output
These are the top 50 countries by total value of manufacturing output in US dollars for its noted year according to
World Bank.
*
See also
*
Outline of manufacturing
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to manufacturing:
Manufacturing – use of machines, tools and labor to produce goods for use or sale. Includes a range of human activity, from handicraft to high-tech, ...
References
Sources
*
External links
How Everyday Things Are Made video presentations
Grant Thornton IBR 2008 Manufacturing industry focus*
ttps://www.nist.gov/el/msid/infotest/digital-thread-manufacturing.cfm Enabling the Digital Thread for Smart ManufacturingEvidences of Metal Manufacturing Historyof the
National Occupational Research Agenda, USA, 2018.
*
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