Manufacturing

I

Introduction

Manufacturing, producing goods that are necessary for modern life from raw materials. The word manufacture comes from the Latin manus (hand) and facere (to make). Originally manufacturing was accomplished by hand, but most of today's modern manufacturing operations are highly mechanized and automated.

There are three main processes involved in virtually all manufacturing: assembly, extraction, and alteration. Assembly is the combination of parts to make a product. For example, an airplane is assembled when the manufacturer puts together the engines, wings, and fuselage. Extraction is the process of removing one or more components from raw materials, such as obtaining gasoline from crude oil. Alteration is modifying or molding raw materials into a final product—for example, sawing trees into lumber.

Science and engineering are required to develop new products and to create new manufacturing methods, but there are other factors involved in the manufacturing process. Legal matters, such as obtaining operating permits and meeting industrial safety standards, must be adhered to. Economic considerations, such as competition, worldwide markets, and tariffs, control to some degree what prices are set for manufactured goods and what inventories are needed.

II

History of Manufacturing

Manufacturing has existed as long as civilizations have required goods: bricks to build the Mesopotamian city of Erech (Uruk), clay pots to store grain in ancient Greece, or bronze weapons for the Roman Empire. In the Middle Ages, silk factories operated in Syria, and textile mills were established in Italy, Belgium, France, and England. New routes discovered from Europe to the Far East and to the New World during the Renaissance (14th century to 17th century) stimulated demand for manufactured goods to trade. Factories were built to produce gunpowder, clothing, cast iron, and paper. The manufacturing of these goods was primarily done by hand labor, simple tools, and, rarely, by machines powered by water.

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A

Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution began in England in the middle of the 18th century when the first modern factories appeared, primarily for the production of textiles. Machines, to varying degrees, began to replace the workforce in these modern factories. The cotton gin, created by the American inventor Eli Whitney in 1793, mechanically removed cotton fibers from the seed and increased production. In 1801 Joseph Jacquard, a French inventor, created a loom that used cards with punched holes to automate the placement of threads in the weaving process. The development of the steam engine as a reliable power source by Thomas Newcomen, James Watt, and Richard Trevithick in England, and in America by Oliver Evans, enabled factories to be built away from water sources that had previously been needed to power machines. From the 1790s to the 1830s, more than 100,000 power looms and 9 million spindles were put into service in England and Scotland (see Factory System; Industrial Revolution).

B

Mass Production

In addition to inventing the cotton gin, Eli Whitney made another contribution to the factory system in 1798 by proposing the idea of interchangeable parts. Interchangeable parts make it possible to produce goods quickly because repairs and assembly can be done with previously manufactured, standard parts rather than with costly custom-made ones. This idea led to the development of the assembly line, where a product is manufactured in discrete stages. When one stage is complete, the product is passed to another station where the next stage of production is accomplished. In 1913 the American industrialist Henry Ford and his colleagues first introduced a conveyer belt to an assembly line for flywheel magnetos, a type of simple electric generator, more than tripling production. The assembly line driven by a conveyor belt was then implemented to manufacture the automobile body and motors.