- What is manufacturing?
- Manufacturing history
- Manufacturing types
- Manufacturing characteristics
- Examples of manufactured products
We explain what manufacturing is, its history, types that exist and other characteristics. Also, various examples from everyday life.
Manufactured products have more value than raw materials.What is manufacturing?
It is understood by manufacturing, manufacturing or production at process that converts a raw material in one or more products from consumption. To do this, it modifies the characteristics of the initial material through a set of operations involving machinery, Energy Y workforce.
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 manufactured products, and they have added value compared to the raw material from which they were manufactured. The difference is reflected in their price when they are distributed and marketed in their circuits consumers. This principle is central to the functioning of the capitalism industrial.
The term manufacturing comes from the Latin (manus, "Hand"; facere, "Do"), and can designate a huge variety of productive items, which operate as a circuit or a system.
They are an example of manufacturing industries both those related to discharge technology (technology, telecommunications, auto parts) or goods for immediate consumption (food, beverages, drugs, hygiene personal), such as construction materials, toys, sports supplies, textiles and a huge etcetera.
Manufacturing history
In a way, manufacturing has been around since the early days of humanity, since handicraft, produced through the manual effort of expert individuals, 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) into the productive process.
This new model of industrial production was born in 18th century Britain, but it quickly spread throughout Europe and the United States, and then the rest of the world. Its impact on society was immense: it gradually transformed the peasant masses into workers workers, thus giving rise to the proletariat.
In addition, it stimulated an enormous economic migration from agriculture to cities. It was therefore part of the consequences of the rise of the bourgeoisie What class dominant.
Consequently, it laid the foundations for the emergence 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).
Manufacturing types
The manufacturing industry is extremely diverse, it can be classified as follows:
- Processed products. Those that are ready to be marketed and distributed, whether they are fast-paced or not. For example:
- Food industry. Make food, be it drinks, food packaging, cooking supplies, canning, etc.
- Textile industry. It manufactures clothing and footwear of all kinds 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, as well as to supply hospitals, clinics and other centers of Health.
- Electronics industry. Factory computers, calculators, cell phones, televisions, radios, modems and all kinds of electronic devices, as well as their spare parts and accessories.
- Automovile industry. It manufactures vehicles: automobiles, motorcycles and other motorized vehicles, as well as their parts and spare parts, often separately. It may or may not include an assembly factory (or it 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 Humans we make our wars.
- Semi-finished products. On the contrary, they are inputs that are not definitive 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:
- Wood industry. It produces wood, that is, planks, slats, plates and pieces of wood that must later be worked by a furniture industry, a carpenter, or it can be used as pulp for the paper industry.
- Paper industry. Although paper may well be an elaborate product, such as the one we buy to feed a printer in our home, the bulk of industrially produced paper has other purposes: to feed book printers or newspaper and magazine presses, which produce the products. definitive for the consumption of the people.
- Steel industry. From minerals and metals drawn from the nature, the steel industry carries out foundries, alloys and other processes of modifying the metal to make it fit for work by other industries, such as those that make screws, bolts, or washers.
Manufacturing characteristics
The manufacturing process:
- It consists of modifying the physical and chemical properties of the raw material, in order to obtain more complex, specific goods. For these, their products have greater commercial value.
- You need raw materials to modify and machinery to do it, as well as workforce to operate it and Energy to feed the process.
- It is part of the secondary sector of the economy, traditionally considered as the main producer of wealth, compared to other sectors such as the tertiary or from services, which is understood as a consumer of wealth.
- It is closely related to the design industrial 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 we wear and the shoes we wear.
- The computer on which we browse Internet, but also the modem that allows it and the furniture on which both devices rest.
- The lamps with which we illuminate our house, and the very materials from which the latter is made.
- Automobiles, their spare parts, the accessories with which we “tune” it or make it more attractive.
- The books we read, the magazines we buy, the Sunday paper, the wallpaper on the walls.
- Packaged or canned food, soda, food for our pets, the very refrigerator in which we keep everything.
- The television and its remote control, the cell phone, the calculators.
- The screws with which we assemble a piece of furniture, and the piece of furniture itself, in most cases.
- Virtually everything from plastic, since this material does not exist in the nature.