Manufacturing

Manufacturing refers to any activity in which articles are produced for sale to others or for use by the producer, generally using raw materials or unfinished components. Manufacturing may be executed using a wide variety of technologies, ranging from handwork by craftspeople to the use of sophisticated computer software and industrial facilities to create microscopic integrated circuits on silicon chips. Some manufacturing uses a mass production model, in which large factories employ assembly lines to produce complex products composed of many smaller parts; each person on the assembly line performs a highly specific function on each item that comes down the assembly line, such as tightening a screw or soldering a connection, and when products reach the end of the assembly line, they are in a finished state and ready for distribution to customers. Other manufacturing facilities produce only one article at a time.

Brief History

Prior to the nineteenth century, manufacturing typically took place in the homes and workshops of private individuals. Articles made in this fashion would then be sold or bartered to others or used within the household. Later, some enterprising persons began to organize manufacturing activities among several households in order to fulfill an order by a third party. For example, if an entrepreneur learned that a carriage maker required fifty new wheels, the entrepreneur might promise to fill the order and then contact fifty different artisans and ask each of them to make one wheel. The entrepreneur could then collect the wheels and deliver them to the carriage maker, no doubt at a profit. This system was sometimes known as "putting out" because the work would be sent out to multiple manufacturers.

The arrival of the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century saw this model of production change, as technological advances made it possible to perform the work of manufacturing in new ways. Huge factories were created so that goods could be manufactured on a larger scale. Assembly line production was introduced so that goods could be produced more quickly and with less skill—instead of a single person needing to know every aspect of an article’s operation and assembly, assembly line workers only need to know what action they are supposed to perform on the items that come down the line. One perspective among historians of manufacturing is that the Industrial Revolution was a turning point, after which society (for the most part) opted to pursue quantity rather than quality. Previously, artisans would manufacture a small number of items over a longer period of time, but at a higher level of quality. Assembly line manufacturing reverses this, producing a greater volume of goods in a shorter period, but with the possibility of a decline in quality due to the fact that the workers assembling the products do not possess the same skills as a craftsperson. Depending on the nature of the products being assembled, this difference in quality may or may not be significant to the party intending to use the product.

Manufacturing Today

Manufacturing is occasionally the subject of controversy. One example of this concerns the role it plays in the economy. Different countries rely to a greater or lesser extent on manufacturing as a means of generating wealth. Two important factors that help determine how much of a country’s economy is based on manufacturing are the population of the country and the country’s natural resources. Some countries have few natural resources of their own, so they must import these resources from other countries. Since such countries do not have significant natural resources of their own to produce and export, they often devote a greater proportion of their economy to manufacturing. Other countries face the opposite situation, having abundant natural resources. These nations may have the majority of their economy devoted to extracting the natural resources, so that they may be sent elsewhere for refinement or manufacturing of goods.

Much has been written about the gradual transformation of the United States and its economy from one focused on manufacturing to one focused on the provision of services, a so-called "service economy." Some see this transformation as an unfortunate development, believing that it curtails economic opportunity for many, since the jobs a service economy calls for require either more education than the average person possesses (as in medicine, law, or engineering) or permits a smaller amount of autonomy and a lower wage scale (as in retail and food or hotel service) than a traditional manufacturing job. In contrast, those who favor the development of a service based economy contend that manufacturing jobs tend to provide less in the way of professional development and opportunities for advancement through the expansion of employees’ skills sets.

It is important to keep in mind that the manufacturing of the twenty-first century is far different than the classic examples of the assembly line production of early automobiles. Revolutions in technology have transformed the way goods are manufactured. One such change that is still emerging is the use of three dimensional printer technology (3DP) to manufacture items with no direct involvement by human beings. 3-D printing is a form of additive manufacturing. This means that the item being manufactured is "drawn" in three-dimensional space through the use of tiny amounts of a printing medium. Plastic is the most common, but there are also 3-D printers that use metallic powders or even edible organic matter to manufacture objects. All that is required for 3-D printing is the printer, a supply of printing medium, and a "blueprint" of the item to be printed, which is usually in the form of a computer rendering of the original item. What is more, 3-D printer manufacturing can be location independent, thanks to the availability of the Internet. A designer in Europe can scan an object that needs to be manufactured, and send the scanned rendering to a manufacturing company on the other side of the world, where 3-D printing would then replicate the item in as many copies as were needed. Inventions such as this are forcing those involved with manufacturing to reevaluate the assumptions upon which their business models are founded.

Bibliography

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