Manufacturing facts for kids
Manufacturing is the production of merchandise for use or sale using labour and machines, tools, chemical and biological processing, or formulation. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale. Such finished 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 sold to wholesalers, who in turn sell them to retailers, who then sell them to end users and consumers.
Manufacturing engineering or manufacturing process are the steps through which raw materials are transformed into a final product. The manufacturing process begins with the product design, and materials specification from which the product is made. These materials are then modified through manufacturing processes to become the required part.
Modern manufacturing includes all intermediate processes required in the production and integration of a product's components. Some industries, such as semiconductor and steel manufacturers use the term fabrication instead.
The manufacturing sector is closely connected with engineering and industrial design. Examples of major manufacturers in North America include General Motors Corporation, General Electric, Procter & Gamble, General Dynamics, Boeing, Pfizer, and Precision Castparts. Examples in Europe include Volkswagen Group, Siemens, FCA and Michelin. Examples in Asia include Toyota, Yamaha, Panasonic, Mitsubishi, LG, Samsung and Tata Motors.
Contents
History and development
Prehistory and ancient history
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Human ancestors manufactured objects using stone and other tools long before the emergence of Homo sapiens about 200,000 years ago. The earliest methods of stone tool 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 that could be used as tools, primarily in the form of choppers or scrapers. 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. 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. 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 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.
Copper smelting is believed to have originated when the technology of pottery kiln 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 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. The Iron Age is conventionally defined by the widespread manufacturing of weapons and tools using iron and steel rather than bronze. 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 were invented in Mesopotamia. 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. 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, 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. 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 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, 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 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. Rapid industrialization 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 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 machines 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 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, 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 used 32,000 machine tools.
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. 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.
List of countries by manufacturing output
These are the top 50 countries by total value of manufacturing output in U.S. dollars for its noted year according to World Bank:
| Rank | Country or region | Millions of $US | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| World | 16,350,207 | 2021 | |
| 1 |  China |
4,975,614 | 2022 |
| 2 |  United States |
2,497,132 | 2021 |
| 3 |  Japan |
1,025,092 | 2021 |
| 4 |  Germany |
752,742 | 2022 |
| 5 |  India |
456,064 | 2022 |
| 6 |  South Korea |
429,058 | 2022 |
| 7 |  Mexico |
314,701 | 2022 |
| 8 |  Italy |
306,009 | 2022 |
| 9 |  Russia |
287,713 | 2022 |
| 10 |  France |
265,231 | 2022 |
| 11 |  United Kingdom |
259,314 | 2022 |
| 12 |  Indonesia |
241,873 | 2022 |
| 13 |  Brazil |
213,557 | 2022 |
| 14 |  Ireland |
202,566 | 2022 |
| 15 |  Turkey |
200,552 | 2022 |
| 16 |  Canada |
162,160 | 2019 |
| 17 |  Spain |
161,698 | 2022 |
| 18 |  Saudi Arabia |
160,032 | 2022 |
| 19 |  Switzerland |
150,631 | 2022 |
| 20 |  Thailand |
133,867 | 2022 |
| 21 |  Poland |
120,308 | 2022 |
| 22 |  Netherlands |
115,189 | 2022 |
| 23 |  Argentina |
101,318 | 2022 |
| 24 |  Vietnam |
101,217 | 2022 |
| 25 |  Bangladesh |
100,162 | 2022 |
| 26 |  Singapore |
95,696 | 2022 |
| 27 |  Malaysia |
95,218 | 2022 |
| 28 |  Australia |
91,299 | 2022 |
| 29 |  Iran |
82,660 | 2022 |
| 30 |  Sweden |
79,351 | 2022 |
| 31 |  Egypt |
76,139 | 2022 |
| 32 |  Austria |
74,920 | 2022 |
| 33 |  Belgium |
73,788 | 2022 |
| 34 |  Philippines |
69,696 | 2022 |
| 35 |  Cuba |
67,996 | 2022 |
| 36 |  Algeria |
67,938 | 2022 |
| 37 |  Nigeria |
64,246 | 2022 |
| 38 |  Czech Republic |
60,989 | 2022 |
| 39 |  Venezuela |
58,237 | 2014 |
| 40 |  Pakistan |
51,622 | 2022 |
| 41 |  South Africa |
49,714 | 2022 |
| 42 |  Israel |
49,658 | 2021 |
| 43 |  United Arab Emirates |
49,317 | 2022 |
| 44 |  Puerto Rico |
48,796 | 2022 |
| 45 |  Denmark |
46,654 | 2022 |
| 46 |  Finland |
44,716 | 2022 |
| 47 |  Romania |
39,865 | 2020 |
| 48 |  Colombia |
39,582 | 2022 |
| 49 |  Portugal |
31,254 | 2022 |
| 50 |  Hungary |
30,514 | 2022 |
Images for kids
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Manufacturing of an automobile by Tesla
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Capacity utilization in manufacturing in the FRG and in the USA
- Manufacturing Engineering
- Agile manufacturing
- American system of manufacturing
- British factory system of manufacturing
- Craft or guild system
- Fabrication
- Flexible manufacturing
- Just-in-time manufacturing
- Lean manufacturing
- Mass customization (2000s) – 3D printing, design-your-own web sites for sneakers, fast fashion
- Mass production
- Ownership
- Packaging and labeling
- Prefabrication
- Putting-out system
- Rapid manufacturing
- Reconfigurable manufacturing system
- Soviet collectivism in manufacturing
- History of numerical control
See also
In Spanish: Manufactura para niños
