Manufacturing





Manufacturing describes 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.