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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 the secondary sector of the economy. [1] [ unreliable source? ] The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high-tech, but it is most commonly applied to industrial design, in which raw materials 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, sports equipment or automobiles), or distributed via the tertiary industry to end users and consumers (usually through wholesalers, who in turn sell to retailers, who then sell them to individual customers).
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, and materials specification. These materials are then modified through manufacturing to become the desired product.
Contemporary manufacturing encompasses all intermediary stages involved in producing and integrating components of a product. Some industries, such as semiconductor and steel manufacturers, use the term fabrication instead. [2]
The manufacturing sector is closely connected with the engineering and industrial design industries.
The Modern English word manufacture is likely derived from the Middle French manufacture ("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 manufacture ("made by human hands") and fracture. [3] Its earliest usage in the English language was recorded in the mid-16th century to refer to the making of products by hand. [4] [5]
Human ancestors manufactured objects using stone and other tools long before the emergence of Homo sapiens about 200,000 years ago. [6] The earliest methods of stone tool making, known as the Oldowan "industry", date back to at least 2.3 million years ago, [7] with the earliest direct evidence of tool usage found in Ethiopia within the Great Rift Valley, dating back to 2.5 million years ago. [8] 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 that could be used as tools, primarily in the form of choppers or scrapers. [9] These tools greatly aided the early humans in their hunter-gatherer lifestyle to form other tools out of softer materials such as bone and wood. [10] The Middle Paleolithic, approximately 300,000 years ago, saw the introduction of the prepared-core technique, where multiple blades could be rapidly formed from a single core stone. [9] 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. [11] During the Neolithic period, polished stone tools were manufactured from a variety of hard rocks such as flint, jade, jadeite, 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. [12]
Copper smelting is believed to have originated when the technology of pottery kiln allowed sufficiently high temperatures. [13] 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. [13] Bronze is an alloy of copper with tin; the latter of which being found in relatively few deposits globally delayed true tin bronze becoming 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. [14] The Iron Age is conventionally defined by the widespread manufacturing of weapons and tools using iron and steel rather than bronze. [15] 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. [16]
During the growth of the ancient civilizations, many ancient technologies resulted from advances in manufacturing. Several of the six classic simple machines were invented in Mesopotamia. [17] Mesopotamians have been credited with the invention of the wheel. The wheel and axle mechanism first appeared with the potter's wheel, invented in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) during the 5th millennium BC. [18] 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. [19]
The Middle Ages witnessed new inventions, innovations in the ways of managing traditional means of production, and economic growth. Papermaking, a 2nd-century Chinese technology, was carried to the Middle East when a group of Chinese papermakers were captured in the 8th century. [20] Papermaking technology was spread to Europe by the Umayyad conquest of Hispania. [21] 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. credited the spinning wheel with increasing the supply of rags, which led to cheap paper, which was a factor in the development of printing. [22] Due to the casting of cannon, the blast furnace came into widespread use in France in the mid 15th century. The blast furnace had been used in China since the 4th century BC. [13] The stocking frame, which was invented in 1598, increased a knitter's number of knots per minute from 100 to 1000. [23]
The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Europe and the United States from 1760 to the 1830s. [24] This transition included going from hand production methods to machines, new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes, the increasing use of steam power 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 invested. The textile industry was also the first to use modern production methods. [25] : 40 Rapid industrialization first began in Britain, starting with mechanized spinning in the 1780s, [26] 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. [25]
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 systems, the large-scale manufacture of machine tools and the use of increasingly advanced machinery in steam-powered factories. [25] [27] [28] [29]
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. [30] Shoe production was mechanized during the mid 19th century. [31] Mass production of sewing machines and agricultural machinery such as reapers occurred in the mid to late 19th century. [32] The mass production of bicycles started in the 1880s. [32] Steam-powered factories became widespread, although the conversion from water power to steam occurred in England earlier than in the U.S. [33]
Electrification of factories, which had begun gradually in the 1890s after the introduction of the practical DC motor 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. [34] 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, 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. [35]
Mass production was popularized in the late 1910s and 1920s by Henry Ford's Ford Motor Company, [32] 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 used 32,000 machine tools. [36]
Lean 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. [37] [38] 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. [39] 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. [40] The other article, by Toyota authors in an international journal, provided additional details. [41] 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. [42]
According to a "traditional" view of manufacturing strategy, there are five key dimensions along which the performance of manufacturing can be assessed: cost, quality, dependability, flexibility and innovation. [43]
In regard to manufacturing performance, Wickham Skinner, who has been called "the father of manufacturing strategy", [44] adopted the concept of "focus", [45] with an implication that a business cannot perform at the highest level along all five dimensions and must therefore select one or two competitive priorities. This view led to the theory of "trade offs" in manufacturing strategy. [46] Similarly, Elizabeth Haas wrote in 1987 about the delivery of value in manufacturing for customers in terms of "lower prices, greater service responsiveness or higher quality". [47] The theory of "trade offs" has subsequently being debated and questioned, [46] but Skinner wrote in 1992 that at that time "enthusiasm for the concepts of 'manufacturing strategy' [had] been higher", noting that in academic papers, executive courses and case studies, levels of interest were "bursting out all over". [48]
Manufacturing writer Terry Hill has commented that manufacturing is often seen as a less "strategic" business activity than functions such as marketing and finance, and that manufacturing managers have "come late" to business strategy-making discussions, where, as a result, they make only a reactive contribution. [49] [50]
Emerging technologies 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 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, 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, reducing waste, using industrial symbiosis, 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. [51]
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. [52] [ unreliable source? ] This relative cost reduction towards the market, is how manufacturing firms secure their profit margins. [53]
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. [54] [55] [56]
Surveys and analyses of trends and issues in manufacturing and investment around the world focus on such things as:
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. [57] [58]
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. [59] 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. [60] A total of 3.2 million – one in six U.S. manufacturing jobs – have disappeared between 2000 and 2007. [61] 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.
According to the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), China is the top manufacturer worldwide by 2023 output, producing 28.7% of the total global manufacturing output, followed by the United States of America, Germany, Japan, and India. [62] [63]
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. [64] [65]
In 2023, the manufacturing industry in the United States accounted for 10.70% of the total national output, employing 8.41% of the workforce. The total value of manufacturing output reached $2.5 trillion. [66] [67] In 2023, Germany's manufacturing output reached $844.93 billion, marking a 12.25% increase from 2022. The sector employed approximately 5.5 million people, accounting for around 20.8% of the workforce. [68]
These are the top 50 countries by total value of manufacturing output in U.S. dollars for its noted year according to World Bank: [69]
Rank | Country or region | Millions of $US | Year |
---|---|---|---|
World | 16,182,038 | 2023 | |
1 | China | 4,658,782 | 2023 |
2 | United States | 2,497,132 | 2021 |
3 | Germany | 844,926 | 2023 |
4 | Japan | 818,398 | 2022 |
5 | India | 455,767 | 2023 |
6 | South Korea | 416,389 | 2023 |
7 | Mexico | 360,728 | 2023 |
8 | Italy | 354,722 | 2023 |
9 | France | 294,465 | 2023 |
10 | Brazil | 289,791 | 2023 |
11 | United Kingdom | 284,063 | 2023 |
12 | Indonesia | 255,962 | 2023 |
13 | Russia | 251,577 | 2023 |
14 | Turkey | 215,038 | 2023 |
15 | Ireland | 186,525 | 2023 |
16 | Spain | 181,592 | 2023 |
17 | Switzerland | 160,232 | 2023 |
18 | Saudi Arabia | 157,876 | 2023 |
19 | Canada | 149,268 | 2020 |
20 | Poland | 131,712 | 2023 |
21 | Netherlands | 130,225 | 2023 |
22 | Thailand | 128,271 | 2023 |
23 | Argentina | 104,386 | 2023 |
24 | Vietnam | 102,628 | 2023 |
25 | Bangladesh | 97,727 | 2023 |
26 | Australia | 92,893 | 2023 |
27 | Malaysia | 92,117 | 2023 |
28 | Singapore | 88,498 | 2023 |
29 | Iran | 82,641 | 2022 |
30 | Austria | 80,816 | 2023 |
31 | Sweden | 77,456 | 2023 |
32 | Belgium | 75,079 | 2023 |
33 | Philippines | 70,896 | 2023 |
34 | Czech Republic | 70,732 | 2023 |
35 | Egypt | 59,642 | 2023 |
36 | Venezuela | 58,237 | 2014 |
37 | Denmark | 56,283 | 2023 |
38 | Nigeria | 55,742 | 2023 |
39 | Puerto Rico | 53,769 | 2023 |
40 | Israel | 49,658 | 2021 |
41 | United Arab Emirates | 49,317 | 2022 |
42 | South Africa | 48,809 | 2023 |
43 | Romania | 47,923 | 2023 |
44 | Pakistan | 45,936 | 2023 |
45 | Finland | 44,966 | 2023 |
46 | Colombia | 39,595 | 2023 |
47 | Hungary | 36,403 | 2023 |
48 | Portugal | 34,296 | 2023 |
49 | Kazakhstan | 32,148 | 2023 |
50 | Chile | 30,889 | 2023 |
The Industrial Revolution, sometimes divided into the First Industrial Revolution and Second Industrial Revolution, was a period of global transition of the human economy towards more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes that succeeded the Agricultural Revolution. Beginning in Great Britain, the Industrial Revolution spread to continental Europe and the United States, from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going from hand production methods to machines; new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes; the increasing use of water power and steam power; the development of machine tools; and the rise of the mechanised factory system. Output greatly increased, and the result was an unprecedented rise in population and the rate of population growth. The textile industry was the first to use modern production methods, and textiles became the dominant industry in terms of employment, value of output, and capital invested.
Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon with improved strength and fracture resistance compared to other forms of iron. Because of its high tensile strength and low cost, steel is one of the most commonly manufactured materials in the world. Steel is used in buildings, as concrete reinforcing rods, in bridges, infrastructure, tools, ships, trains, cars, bicycles, machines, electrical appliances, furniture, and weapons.
Mass production, also known as flow production, series production, series manufacture, or continuous production, is the production of substantial amounts of standardized products in a constant flow, including and especially on assembly lines. Together with job production and batch production, it is one of the three main production methods.
A factory, manufacturing plant or production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery, where workers manufacture items or operate machines which process each item into another. They are a critical part of modern economic production, with the majority of the world's goods being created or processed within factories.
Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, mainly by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machines. Automation has been achieved by various means including mechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic, electrical, electronic devices, and computers, usually in combination. Complicated systems, such as modern factories, airplanes, and ships typically use combinations of all of these techniques. The benefit of automation includes labor savings, reducing waste, savings in electricity costs, savings in material costs, and improvements to quality, accuracy, and precision.
Mechanization is the process of changing from working largely or exclusively by hand or with animals to doing that work with machinery. In an early engineering text, a machine is defined as follows:
Every machine is constructed for the purpose of performing certain mechanical operations, each of which supposes the existence of two other things besides the machine in question, namely, a moving power, and an object subject to the operation, which may be termed the work to be done. Machines, in fact, are interposed between the power and the work, for the purpose of adapting the one to the other.
A machine tool is a machine for handling or machining metal or other rigid materials, usually by cutting, boring, grinding, shearing, or other forms of deformations. Machine tools employ some sort of tool that does the cutting or shaping. All machine tools have some means of constraining the workpiece and provide a guided movement of the parts of the machine. Thus, the relative movement between the workpiece and the cutting tool is controlled or constrained by the machine to at least some extent, rather than being entirely "offhand" or "freehand". It is a power-driven metal cutting machine which assists in managing the needed relative motion between cutting tool and the job that changes the size and shape of the job material.
Metalworking is the process of shaping and reshaping metals in order to create useful objects, parts, assemblies, and large scale structures. As a term, it covers a wide and diverse range of processes, skills, and tools for producing objects on every scale: from huge ships, buildings, and bridges, down to precise engine parts and delicate jewelry.
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 supplied above atmospheric pressure.
The Second Industrial Revolution, also known as the Technological Revolution, was a phase of rapid scientific discovery, standardisation, mass production and industrialisation from the late 19th century into the early 20th century. The First Industrial Revolution, which ended in the middle of the 19th century, was punctuated by a slowdown in important inventions before the Second Industrial Revolution in 1870. Though a number of its events can be traced to earlier innovations in manufacturing, such as the establishment of a machine tool industry, the development of methods for manufacturing interchangeable parts, as well as the invention of the Bessemer process and open hearth furnace to produce steel, later developments heralded the Second Industrial Revolution, which is generally dated between 1870 and 1914.
The American system of manufacturing was a set of manufacturing methods that evolved in the 19th century. The two notable features were the extensive use of interchangeable parts and mechanization for production, which resulted in more efficient use of labor compared to hand methods. The system was also known as armory practice because it was first fully developed in armories, namely, the United States Armories at Springfield in Massachusetts and Harpers Ferry in Virginia, inside contractors to supply the United States Armed Forces, and various private armories. The name "American system" came not from any aspect of the system that is unique to the American national character, but simply from the fact that for a time in the 19th century it was strongly associated with the American companies who first successfully implemented it, and how their methods contrasted with those of British and continental European companies. In the 1850s, the "American system" was contrasted to the British factory system which had evolved over the previous century. Within a few decades, manufacturing technology had evolved further, and the ideas behind the "American" system were in use worldwide. Therefore, in manufacturing today, which is global in the scope of its methods, there is no longer any such distinction.
The history of technology is the history of the invention of tools and techniques by humans. Technology includes methods ranging from simple stone tools to the complex genetic engineering and information technology that has emerged since the 1980s. The term technology comes from the Greek word techne, meaning art and craft, and the word logos, meaning word and speech. It was first used to describe applied arts, but it is now used to describe advancements and changes that affect the environment around us.
Textile manufacture during the British Industrial Revolution was centred in south Lancashire and the towns on both sides of the Pennines in the United Kingdom. The main drivers of the Industrial Revolution were textile manufacturing, iron founding, steam power, oil drilling, the discovery of electricity and its many industrial applications, the telegraph and many others. Railroads, steamboats, the telegraph and other innovations massively increased worker productivity and raised standards of living by greatly reducing time spent during travel, transportation and communications.
The factory system is a method of manufacturing whereby workers and manufacturing equipment are centralized in a factory, the work is supervised and structured through a division of labor, and the manufacturing process is mechanized. Because of the high capital cost of machinery and factory buildings, factories are typically privately owned by wealthy individuals or corporations who employ the operative labor. Use of machinery with the division of labor reduced the required skill-level of workers and also increased the output per worker.
Industrial technology is the use of engineering and manufacturing technology to make production faster, simpler, and more efficient. The industrial technology field employs creative and technically proficient individuals who can help a company achieve efficient and profitable productivity.
Ferrous metallurgy is the metallurgy of iron and its alloys. The earliest surviving prehistoric iron artifacts, from the 4th millennium BC in Egypt, were made from meteoritic iron-nickel. It is not known when or where the smelting of iron from ores began, but by the end of the 2nd millennium BC iron was being produced from iron ores in the region from Greece to India, The use of wrought iron was known by the 1st millennium BC, and its spread defined the Iron Age. During the medieval period, smiths in Europe found a way of producing wrought iron from cast iron, in this context known as pig iron, using finery forges. All these processes required charcoal as fuel.
The industrialization of China refers to the process of China undergoing various stages of industrialization and technological revolutions. The focus is on the period after the founding of the People's Republic of China where China experienced its most notable transformation from a largely agrarian country to an industrialized powerhouse. Although the Chinese industrialization is largely defined by its 20th-century campaigns, especially those motivated by Mao Zedong's political calls to "exceed the UK and catch the USA", China has a long history that contextualizes the proto-industrial efforts, and explains the reasons for delay of industrialization in comparison to Western countries.
The productivity-improving technologies are the technological innovations that have historically increased productivity.
The machine industry or machinery industry is a subsector of the industry, that produces and maintains machines for consumers, the industry, and most other companies in the economy.
Industrialization in the Russian Empire saw the development of an industrial economy, whereby labor productivity increased and the demand for industrial goods was partially provided from within the empire. Industrialization in the Russian Empire was a reaction to the industrialization process in Western European countries.
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