Manufacturing

Manufacturing is the transformation of raw materials into finished goods for sale, or intermediate processes involving the production or finishing of semi-manufactures. It is a large branch of industry and of secondary production.

Although handicraft production has been with us for many millennia, modern-style manufacturing is generally regarded as beginning around 1780 with the British Industrial Revolution, spreading thereafter to Continental Europe and North America, and subsequently around the world.

While it remains a huge part of the modern world economy - perhaps a quarter of aggregate world production of goods and services - many of the world's wealthier nations devote an ever smaller proportion of their workforce to manufacturing activity owing to relocation of enterprises to lower-wage countries and the rising proportion of economic activity devoted to service activity.

Table of contents

1 Manufacturing Topics

1.1 Manufacturing Systems
1.2 Theories
1.3 Control
1.4 Manufacturing Engineering
1.5 Assembly Systems
1.6 Design
1.7 Others
1.8 Lists of related topics

Manufacturing Topics

Manufacturing Systems

Craft system
English system of manufacturing
American System of manufacturing
Soviet collectivism in manufacturing
Mass production
Just in time manufacturing
Lean manufacturing
Flexible manufacturing
Mass customization
Agile manufacturing

Theories

Control

Manufacturing Engineering

Industrial and manufacturing engineering
Computer-aided manufacturing
Computer integrated manufacturing
Numerically controlled
Computer numerically controlled
Fieldbus control systems
Programmable logic controllers