Manufacturing

Manufacturing is the transformation of raw materials into finished goods for sale, by means of tools and a processing medium, and including all intermediate processes involving the production or finishing of component parts ("semi-manufactures"). It is a large branch of industry and of secondary production. Some industries, like semiconductor and steel manufacturers use the term "fabrication".

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. Originally, the term applied to commodities or artifacts which were "made by hand".

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.