A factory (previously manufactory) or manufacturing plant is a large industrial building where workers manufacture goods or products. Most modern factories have large warehouse-like facilities that contain heavy equipment used for assembly line production. Archetypally, factories gather and concentrate resources -- workers, capital and plant. Building is either the act of creating an object assembled from more than one element, or the object itself; see also construction. ... Manufacturing is the transformation of raw materials into finished goods for sale, or intermediate processes involving the production or finishing of semi-manufactures. ... Good. ... Inside Green Logistics Co. ... This page discusses common devices known as tools, for other meanings see Tool (disambiguation) Modern hammer A tool is, among other things, a device that provides a mechanical or mental advantage in accomplishing a task. ... An assembly line is a manufacturing process in which interchangeable parts are added to a product in a sequential manner to create an end product. ... Archetype is defined as the original model of which all other similar persons, objects, or concepts are merely derivative, copied, patterned, or emulated. ... In classical economics and all micro-economics labour is one of three factors of production, the others being land and capital. ... In politics a capital (also called capital city or political capital — although the latter phrase has an alternative meaning based on an alternative meaning of capital) is the principal city or town associated with its government. ...

Word usage

Before becoming associated with large-scale manufacturing, the term factory might refer to:

• a foreign-based trading station. Proto-colonies in West Africa and India often featured such factories.
• China also had factories, or warehouses, run by factors. These were restricted to a special area in Canton from 1760 until 1842 under the Canton System.
• the activity of factors (mercantile agents).

The Oxford English Dictionary traces the use of factory as a manufacturing site, plant or works back as far as 1618. Look up Trade in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Trade centers on the exchange of goods and/or services. ... In politics and in history, a colony is a territory under the immediate political control of a geographically-distant state (or city, in ancient times). ... West Africa is the region of western Africa generally considered to include these countries: Benin Burkina Faso Cameroon Côte dIvoire (Ivory Coast) Equatorial Guinea Gabon The Gambia Ghana Guinea Guinea-Bissau Liberia Mali Niger Nigeria Republic of the Congo (Congo-Brazzaville) Senegal Sierra Leone Togo Chad, Mauritania, and... Location within China CITIC Plaza Guangzhou fireworks display at night Guangzhou (Simplified Chinese: 广州; Traditional Chinese: 廣州; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Kuang-chou; Jyutping: Gwong2zau1; Yale: GwóngjaÅ«) is the capital of the Guangdong Province in southern China. ... 1760 was a leap year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... 1842 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... Under the Canton System, from 1760 until the Opium Wars, foreign warehouses or factories were restricted in China by the Qianlong Emperor to a special district in Canton. ... The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a comprehensive dictionary published by the Oxford University Press (OUP). ... Events March 8 - Johannes Kepler discovers the third law of planetary motion (he soon rejects the idea after some initial calculations were made but on May 15 confirms the discovery). ...

History of the factory

The Venice Arsenal provides the first example of a factory in the modern sense of the word. Founded in 1104 in Venice, Italy, several hundred years before the Industrial Revolution, it mass-produced ships on assembly lines using manufactured parts. The Venice Arsenal apparently produced nearly one ship every day and, at its height, employed 16,000 people. The Porta Magna at the Venetian Arsenal The Venetian Arsenal (Italian: Arsenale di Venezia) is a shipyard and naval depot that played a leading role in Venetian empire-building. ... Events The worlds first factory, the Venice Arsenal, is founded in Venice. ... Location within Italy Venice (Italian Venezia), the city of canals, is the capital of the region of Veneto and of the province of Venice, 45°26′ N 12°19′ E, population 271,663 (census estimate 2004-01-01). ... The Industrial Revolution was the major social, economic and technological change in the late 18th and early 19th century. ... Mass production is the production of large amounts of standardised products on production lines. ... An assembly line is a manufacturing process in which interchangeable parts are added to a product in a sequential manner to create an end product. ... The American system of manufacturing, developed by Eli Whitney in 1799, involves semi-skilled labour using machine tools and templates (or jigs) to make standardized, identical, interchangeable parts, manufactured to a tolerance. ...

Apart from that, many historians regard Matthew Boulton's Soho Manufactory (established in 1761 in Birmingham) as the first modern factory. Matthew Boulton. ... The Soho Manufactory was an early factory, opening in Soho, Birmingham, England by Matthew Boulton in 1761. ... 1761 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... This article is about the city in England. ...

British colonies in the late 18th century built factories simply as buildings where a large number of workers gathered to perform hand labor, usually in textile production. This proved more efficient – for administration and for the distribution of raw materials to individual workers – than earlier methods of manufacturing such as cottage industries or the putting-out system. (17th century - 18th century - 19th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 18th century refers to the century that lasted from 1701 through 1800. ... Textile is also a kind of ReStructured Text. ... Wiktionary has a definition of: Administration Organisational use In some organisational analyses, administration can refer to the bureaucratic or operational performance of mundane office tasks, usually internally oriented. ... This page deals with mathematical distributions. ... material is the substance or matter from which something is or can be made, or also items needed for doing or creating something. ... A cottage industry is an industry – primarily manufacturing – which includes many producers, working from their homes, typically part time. ... The domestic system or putting-out system was a popular system of cloth production in Europe. ...

Cotton mills utilised inventions such as the steam engine and the power loom to pioneer the industrial factory of the 19th century, where precision machine tools and replaceable parts allowed greater efficiency and less waste. The cotton mill is a type of factory that was created to house spinning and weaving machinery. ... A steam engine needs a boiler to boil water to produce steam under pressure. ... The power loom was designed in 1784 by Edmund Cartwright and first built in 1785. ... Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ... A machine tool is a powered mechanical device, typically used to fabricate metal components of machines by the selective removal of metal. ... Efficiency is the capability of acting or producing effectively with a minimum of waste, expense, or unnecessary effort. ...

Henry Ford further revolutionized the factory concept in the early 20th century, with the innovation of mass production. Highly specialized workers situated alongside a series of rolling ramps would build up a product such as (in Ford's case) an automobile. This concept dramatically decreased production costs for virtually all manufactured goods and brought about the age of consumerism. Time Magazine, January 14, 1935 Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was the founder of the Ford Motor Company and is credited with contributing to the creation of a middle class in American society. ... (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999 in the... Mass production is the production of large amounts of standardised products on production lines. ... A small variety of cars, the most popular kind of automobile. ... Consumerism is a term used to describe the effects of equating personal happiness with purchasing material possessions and consumption. ...

In the mid- to late 20th century, Japan introduced next-generation factories with two improvements:

1. Advanced statistical methods of quality control, pioneered by the American mathematician William Edwards Deming, whom his home country initially ignored. Quality control turned Japanese factories into world leaders in cost-effectiveness and production quality.
2. Industrial robots on the factory floor, introduced in the late 1970s. These computer-controlled welding arms and grippers could perform simple tasks such as attaching a car door quickly and flawlessly 24 hours a day. This too cut costs and improved speed.

Some speculation as to the future of the factory includes scenarios with rapid prototyping, nanotechnology, and orbital zero-gravity facilities. Statistics is a type of data analysis whose practice includes the planning, summarizing, and interpreting of observations of a system possibly followed by predicting or forecasting of future events based on a mathematical model of the system being observed. ... In engineering and manufacturing, quality control and quality engineering are involved in developing systems to ensure products or services are designed and produced to meet or exceed customer requirements. ... Dr. William Edwards Deming (October 14, 1900 - December 20, 1993) was a American physicist and statistician, attaining great influence in the field of statistical process control. ... Cost-effectiveness In economics, comparison of the relative expenditure (costs) and outcomes (effects) associated with two or more courses of action. ... A humanoid robot playing the trumpet In practical usage, a robot is a mechanical device which performs automated physical tasks, either according to direct human supervision, a pre-defined program or, a set of general guidelines using artificial intelligence techniques. ... This article provides extensive lists of events and significant personalities of the 1970s. ... Rapid prototyping, also known as solid freeform fabrication, is the automatic construction of physical objects with 3D printers, stereolithography machines or selective laser sintering systems. ... A mite next to a gear chain produced using nanotechnology. ... In physics, an orbit is the path that an object makes, around another object, whilst under the influence of a source of centripetal force, such as gravity. ... Gravitation is the tendency of masses to move toward each other. ...

Siting the factory

Before the advent of mass transportation, factories' needs for ever-greater concentrations of workers meant that they typically grew up in an urban setting or fostered their own urbanisation. Industrial slums developed, and re-enforced their own development through the interactions between factories, as when one factory's output or waste-product became the raw materials of another factory (preferably nearby). Canals and railways grew as factories spread, each clustering around sources of cheap energy, available materials and/or mass markets. The exception proved the rule: even greenfields factory sites such as Bournville, founded in a rural setting, developed its own housing and profitted from convenient communications networks. A taxi serving as a bus Public transport comprises all transport systems in which the passengers do not travel in their own vehicles. ... Urbanization is the degree of or increase in urban character or nature. ... A boy from an East Cipinang trash dump slum in Jakarta, Indonesia shows his find. ... Interaction is a kind of action which occurs as two or more objects have an effect upon one another. ... The Canal du Midi in Toulouse, France Canals are man-made waterways, usually connecting existing lakes, rivers, or oceans. ... See: In astrophysics and astrometry: star cluster, galaxy cluster In molecular physics and solid state physics: A collaboration of (mostly equal) atoms, halfway between molecules and crystals; see cluster (physics) In music: tone cluster In statistics: cluster sampling or cluster analysis metall cluster In economics: Porters cluster Techno cluster... Bournville is an area on the south side of Birmingham England, best known for its connections with the Cadbury family and chocolate - including a dark chocolate bar branded Bournville. History Originally consisting of a scattering of farmsteads and cottages linked by winding country lanes, the only visual highlight being the...

Regulation curbed some of the worst excesses of industrialisation's factory-based society, a series of Factory Acts leading the way in Britain. Trams, automobiles and town planning encouraged the separate development ('apartheid') of industrial suburbs and residential suburbs, with workers commuting between them. Industrialisation (or industrialization) or an industrial revolution (in general, with lowercase letters) is a process of social and economic change whereby a human society is transformed from a pre-industrial to an industrial state. ... Street cars in New Orleans A modern tram in the Töölö district of Helsinki, Finland For modern innovations aimed at increasing the capacity and speed of tramway systems, see light rail. ... Urban, city, or town planning, deals with design of the built environment from the municipal and metropolitan perspective. ...

Though factories dominated the Industrial Era, the growth in the service sector eventually began to dethrone them: the locus of work in general shifted to central-city office towers or to semi-rural campus-style establishments, and many factories stood deserted in local rust belts. The tertiary sector of industry, also called the service sector or the service industry, is one of the three main industrial categories of a developed economy, the others being the secondary industry (manufacturing and primary goods production such as agriculture), and primary industry (extraction such as mining and fishing). ... The Rust Belt, highlighted in red The Rust Belt, also known as the Manufacturing Belt, is an area in the northeastern and north-central United States whose economy was formerly based largely on heavy industry, manufacturing, and associated industries. ...

The next blow to the traditional factories came from globalisation. Manufacturing processes (or their logical successors, assembly plants) in the late 20th century re-focussed in many instances on Special Economic Zones in developing countries or on maquiladoras just across the national boundaries of industrialised states. Further re-location to the least industrialised nations appears possible as the benefits of out-sourcing and the lessons of flexible location apply in the future. Globalization is a term used to describe the changes in societies and the world economy that are the result of dramatically increased trade and cultural exchange. ... An assembly is in politics, any body meeting together to discuss matters, a parliament or a legislative assembly such as the French revolutionary Legislative Assembly, or a body more designed to mediate between otherwise independent bodies, such as the United Nations General Assembly. ... A Special Economic Zone (SEZ) is a geographical region that has economic laws different from a countrys typical economic laws. ... A maquiladora (or maquila) is a factory, the majority of which are located in Mexican border towns, that imports materials and equipment on a duty- and tariff-free basis for assembly or manufacturing. ... Outsourcing (or contracting out) is often defined as the delegation of non-core operations or jobs from internal production to an external entity (such as a subcontractor) that specializes in that operation. ...

Governing the factory

Much of management theory developed in response to the need to control factory processes. Assumption of the hierarchies of unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled workers and their supervisors and managers linger on. Management (from Old French ménagement the art of conducting, directing, from Latin manu agere to lead by the hand) characterises the process of leading and directing all or part of an organization, often a business, through the deployment and manipulation of resources (human, financial, material, intellectual or intangible). ...

See also

• manufacturing
• list of production topics
• industrial railway