Manufacturing is 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. Some industries,
like
semiconductor and
steel manufactureres 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.
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.