We explain what manufacturing is, its history, types that exist and other characteristics. Also, various examples from everyday life.
What is manufacturing?
Manufacturing, manufacturing or production is understood to be process that converts a raw material into one or more consumer products . To do this, it modifies the characteristics of the initial material through a set of operations in which machinery, energy and labor intervene.
This activity is typically industrial (secondary economic sector). It generally operates on a large scale, that is, producing massively.
Goods produced in this way are known as manufactured products or processed products, and have added value with respect to the raw material from which they were manufactured. The difference is reflected in their price when they are distributed and marketed in their consumer circuits. This principle is central to the functioning of industrial capitalism.
The term manufacturing comes from the Latin (manus“hand”; facere“do”), and can designate an enormous variety of productive items, which operate as a circuit or a system.
Examples of manufacturing industries are those linked to high technology (technology, telecommunications, auto parts) or immediate consumer goods (food, beverages, drugs, personal hygiene products), such as construction materials, toys, sports supplies. , textiles and a huge etcetera.
Manufacturing history
In some ways, manufacturing has existed since the beginning of humanity, since craftsmanship, produced through the manual effort of skilled individuals, It is a common economic activity at least since the Middle Ages .
However, modern manufacturing, understood by today's industrial standards, appeared around 1780 when the Industrial Revolution brought with it the mechanization of production, incorporating machinery (and therefore, energy) to the production process.
This new model of industrial production was born in 18th century Great Britain, but quickly spread throughout Europe and the United States, and then to the rest of the world. Its impact on society was immense: gradually transformed the peasant masses into blue-collar workers thus giving rise to the proletariat.
In addition, it stimulated an enormous economic migration from agriculture to the cities. It was part, therefore, of the consequences of the rise of the bourgeoisie as the dominant class.
Consequently, laid the foundations for the rise of capitalism thanks to mass production, in which Fordism had immense importance: a system of rapid and mass production that emerged in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century. Its name comes from its inventor, Henry Ford (1863-1947).
Types of manufacturing
The manufacturing industry is extremely diverse, it can be classified as follows:
- Prepared products Those that are ready to be marketed and distributed, whether they are for rapid consumption or not. For example:
- Food industry Manufactures food, whether beverages, packaged foods, cooking supplies, canned goods, etc.
- Textile industry It manufactures clothing and footwear of all types and for all tastes, from pants, shirts, scarves, caps, sneakers, etc.
- Pharmaceutical industry It manufactures medicines and drugs, both for the free consumption of the population and to supply hospitals, clinics and other health centers.
- electronics industry It manufactures computers, calculators, cell phones, televisions, radios, modems and all types of electronic devices, as well as their spare parts and accessories.
- Automobile industry It manufactures vehicles: automobiles, motorcycles and other motor vehicles, as well as their parts and accessories, often separately. It may or may not include an assembly factory (or you may outsource such a process).
- Arms industry It manufactures weapons of various kinds: pistols, military rifles, civilian revolvers, bombs, missiles and other inventions with which human beings wage our wars.
- Semi-finished products On the contrary, they are non-definitive inputs or that are part of other subsequent manufacturing processes, that is, they are products to feed other factories that in turn produce manufactured goods. For example:
- Lumber industry It produces wood, that is, planks, battens, plates and pieces of wood that must then be processed by a furniture industry, a carpenter, or it can serve as pulp for the paper industry.
- paper industry Although paper may well be a manufactured product, like the one we buy to feed a printer in our home, the bulk of industrially manufactured paper has other purposes: feeding book printers or newspaper and magazine presses, which produce the products definitive for people's consumption.
- Steel industry Using minerals and metals extracted from nature, the steel industry carries out castings, alloys and other metal modification processes to make it suitable for work by other industries, such as those that manufacture screws, bolts or washers.
Manufacturing characteristics
The manufacturing process:
- It consists of modifying the physical and chemical properties of the raw material to obtain more complex, specific goods. For these reasons, their products have greater commercial value.
- Need raw materials to modify and machinery to do so, as well as labour to operate it and energy to feed the process.
- It is part of the secondary sector of the economy, traditionally considered the main producer of wealth, compared to other sectors such as the tertiary or services, which are understood as consumers of wealth.
- It is closely related to industrial design and engineering.
- It represents the main economic sector in the so-called First World in contrast to the extractive or raw material industry in the Third.
Examples of manufactured products
It is not difficult to find examples of manufactured products. Practically everything around us is:
- The clothes what we wear and the shoes we wear.
- He computer in which we browse the Internet, but also the modem that allows us to do so and the furniture on which both devices rest.
- The lamps with which we illuminate our house, and the very materials with which the latter is made.
- The automobiles its spare parts, the accessories with which we “tune” it or make it more attractive.
- The books what we read, the magazines we buy, the Sunday newspaper, the wallpaper on the walls.
- The food packaged or canned, sodas, food for our pets, the refrigerator itself in which we keep everything.
- He TV and your remote control, cell phone, calculators.
- The screws with which we assemble a piece of furniture, and the furniture itself, in most cases.
- Practically everything that is plastic since this material does not exist in nature.
References
- “Manufacturing” on Wikipedia.
- “Production and manufacturing” on Wikipedia.
- “Manufacturing” in Economipedia.
- “Manufacturing” in Investopedia.
- “Manufacturing” in The Encyclopaedia Britannica.
