Industry

An industrial operator works in a factory

The industry is an activity whose purpose is to transform raw materials into finished, semi-finished or super-finished products, using an energy source. For its development, the industry needs materials, machinery and human resources usually organized in companies by their labor specialization. There are different kinds of industries by virtue of the foundational ethical purpose of their activity (ecological: ecological foundations) and types that demarcate them in sectorial areas depending on the products they manufacture. For example, the food industry is dedicated to the production of products for food, such as cheese, sausages and preserves, among others.

Manufacturing engineering, or the manufacturing process, are the steps through which raw materials are transformed into a final product. The manufacturing process begins with the design of the product, and the specification of the materials from which the product is made. These materials are then modified through manufacturing processes to become the required part.

Modern manufacturing includes all the intermediate processes necessary in the production and integration of the components of a product. Some industries, such as semiconductors and steel, use the term manufacturing instead.

The manufacturing sector is closely related to engineering and industrial design. Some examples of large manufacturers in North America are General Motors Corporation, General Electric, Procter & Gamble, AbbVie, Unilever, General Dynamics, Boeing, Pfizer, Precision Castparts, and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. In Europe, for example, Volkswagen Group, Siemens, BASF and Michelin. Examples in Asia include Toyota, Yamaha, Panasonic, LG, Samsung, Godrej & Boyce and Tata Motors.

History

Since the origin of human beings, they have had the need to transform the elements of nature in order to take advantage of them. In a strict sense, industry already existed, but at the end of the century XVIII, and during the XIX century, the process transformation of natural resources undergoes a radical change, which is known as the industrial revolution.

This change is based on the reduction of the work time necessary to transform a resource into a useful product, thanks to the use of a capitalist mode of production, which seeks to achieve an economic benefit by increasing income and reducing expenses. With the industrial revolution, capitalism acquires a new dimension, and the transformation of nature reaches unsuspected limits until then.

Industry was the driving force of the economy from the XIX century and, until the Second World War, industry it was the economic sector that contributed the most to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and the one that employed the most manpower. Since then, and with the increase in productivity due to the improvement of machines and the development of services, it has passed into the background. However, it continues to be essential, since there can be no services without industrial development.

Investment capital in Europe comes from the accumulation of wealth in agriculture. The agricultural capital will be invested in the industry and in the means of transport necessary to put the elaborated products on the market.

In principle, industrial products increase the productivity of the land, thereby reducing the labor force for the industry and producing surplus agricultural products to feed a growing population. Agriculture, then, provides industry with capital, labor power and merchandise. All this is a necessary condition for the development of the industrial revolution.

Thanks to the industrial revolution, regions can specialize, especially due to the creation of efficient means of transport, in a national market and another international market, as free as possible of tariff and bureaucratic obstacles.

A new economic structure, and the destruction of traditional society, ensured the availability of a sufficient wage and volunteer labor force.

In Third World countries, and in some late-industrializing countries, capital is provided by foreign investment, which assembles the necessary infrastructures to extract wealth and surplus value generated by the labor force; without freeing the necessary workforce from agricultural tasks, but only the essential ones. At first, slavery had to be used to guarantee labor. But the change in the economic structure, and the destruction of the traditional society, guaranteed the availability of sufficient capital.

Manufacturing in the Soviet Union was based on collectivism.

Manufacturing systems: manufacturing methods

• Agile manufacturing
• Manufacture with metals
• Flexible manufacturing
• Method just in time
• Lean manufacturing
• Manufacturing engineering
• Mass customization
• Chain production
• Numerical control
• Prefabrication
• 3D printing
• reconfigurable manufacturing system
• High performance positioning system

Importance of the industry

Industry was the driving force of the economy from the XIX and, until World War II, industry was the economic sector that contributed the most to the gross domestic product (GDP), and the one that employed the most manpower. Since then, and with the increase in productivity due to the improvement of machines and the development of services, it has passed into the background. Even so, it continues to be essential, since there can be no services without industrial development.

Investment capital, in Europe, comes from the accumulation of wealth in agriculture. The agricultural capital will be invested in the industry and in the means of transport necessary to put the elaborated products on the market.

In principle, industrial products will increase the productivity of the land, with which labor force can be released for the industry and surplus agricultural products can be obtained to feed a growing urban population that does not live off the countryside. Agriculture, then, provides industry with capital, plenty of labor and merchandise. All this is a necessary condition for the development of the industrial revolution.

In Third World countries, and in some late-industrializing countries, capital is provided by foreign investment, which assembles the necessary infrastructures to extract wealth and surplus value generated by the labor force; without freeing the necessary workforce from agricultural tasks, but only the essential. At first he had to resort to slavery to guarantee labor. But the change in the economic structure, and the destruction of the traditional society, guaranteed the availability of sufficient capital.

Manufacturing

Manufacturing is the most elementary form of industry; the word means "to make by hand" but in economics it means transforming the raw material into a product of concrete utility. Almost everything we use is a product of this process, and almost everything that is manufactured is made in large factories. Artisans also make wares, either alone or in small groups. There are goods that need to be manufactured in several stages, for example cars, which are built with parts that have been made in others, generally from other countries and from the same country. Or it is made up of companies from very small (tortillerías, bakeries and mills, among others) to large conglomerates (automobile assembly companies, soft drink bottlers, food packaging companies, pharmaceutical laboratories and toy factories).

Types of industries

The industry can be classified according to the amount of goods they use to transform the products and according to the type of final result.

Heavy industry is designed to allow other industries to function, since it is in charge of producing the base materials. Thus, mining, the steel industry or the petrochemical industry help make raw materials (such as oil) accessible to factories (for example, producing plastic).

The capital goods industry also helps other industries, but by making machines and transport for merchandise. This group includes infrastructures (such as railways or the aeronautical sector), construction materials or automobile companies, among others.

Finally, the so-called light industry, which requires less investment in raw materials and energy, produces goods for the general market. This classification includes the food, textile, computer, furniture, etc. industries. The type of final product causes them to be grouped in one way or another.

By classes

Some of the main industrial sectors are:

• Food industry has as its function the transformation of first subjects of human consumption to products with a longer service life based on the understanding of phenomena of food chemistry, biology and physics. This is done with different purposes, the most important thing that these first materials can keep as long as possible, without losing their nutritional value, reducing costs when it comes to transport; dehydration is the most common example: milk, fruit. The way food is transformed decisively influences the properties they will present. Thus, if you are subjected to thermal treatment, for example cooking, it is to be expected that the water loss will be the cause of the fact that you crumble at the bite. This is the case of cookies. Also a change in food properties can also introduce unwanted effects. Following the example, if this cookie is left long enough in the open air it will tend to absorb the humidity lost in the heat treatment suffered, with which it will occur soft. On the other hand, the process experienced during the production of food, if performed in inadequate conditions, could lead to a loss of certain components: volatile compounds, vitamins, even proteins. Its objectives are:

1. Control the operations of industrial processes of manufacturing, processing or conditioning of first materials
2. Design and control processing systems with the lowest negative impacts on the environment
3. Use food sciences to develop, improve or offer new products
4. Design quality systems that contribute to ensuring nutritional value, food safety
5. Projecting, planning, calculating and controlling facilities, machinery and tools for industrial establishments
6. Ensuring the consumer the safety of each food product

This industry also integrates the agricultural industry, that is, poultry, beekeeping, wine, oil and dairy.

• Entertainment industry or cultural industry is the group of companies and institutions in which the main economic activity is the production of culture or leisure in a massive and series way based on the constant repetition of basic schemes that show a series of situations and models irreal and inaccessible to the vast majority of cases, with a lucrative purpose. Cultural means of production can be considered: television, radio, newspapers and magazines, cinema, music, publishers, theatre, dance, video games, theme parks, etc. All of these are developed while seeking to increase the consumption of their cultural objects, modify social habits, educate, inform and finally transform society. Thus, any cultural object is considered a cultural product with an ethical value and an aesthetic value, from which the market guides its supply through the laws of supply and demand. In this way, we appreciate the "skematism" of the cultural industry that stands before the commercial value of the products to their cultural quality. The expression cultural industry was first employed by the theorists of the Frankfurt School: Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer in the book Dialektik der Aufklärung (dialectic of illustration) written in 1944, a time when culture no longer needs to be socially justified. In this work, Adorno and Horkheimer deepen the reification of culture through industrial processes. They assume that the concentrated economy system is a commercial system in which the cultural industry is shown as a business that, in turn, reaffirms the same system, so that the technological resources end up being resources of domination over the receiver (technocracy). According to this system, most of the structural needs of modern society find their satisfaction in mass culture. According to Zallo the Cultural Industry is: "a set of branches, segments and auxiliary industrial activities producing and distributing goods with symbolic contents, conceived by a creative work, organized by a capital that is valued and finally destined to the consumer markets with a function of ideological and social reproduction. According to King and others, cultural industries are those that achieve the creation and production of commercial goods and services with intangible content of a cultural nature. They are goods and services that integrate forms of life, values, ideas and that for the purposes of their protection require a regulation of copyright. It is access to certain resources (mainly economic) that allows to influence culture (McBride Report). In short, according to some of these authors, the cultural industry is seen as a repressor of the instincts and individuality of the people, as well as a tool that allows and promotes the perpetuation of the capitalist system.
• Pharmaceutical industry is the sector dedicated to the development, manufacture and preparation of medicinal chemicals for the prevention or treatment of diseases. Some companies in the sector manufacture bulk pharmaceuticals (primary production), and all are prepared for medical use through collectively known methods such as secondary production. Highly automated secondary production processes include the manufacture of dosed drugs such as pills, capsules or envelopes by oral administration, injection solutions, eggs and suppositories. The preparations have different presentations and can be sucked (such as caramels) or taken orally (such as jarabs) or administered in the form of inhalations with dosed aerosols, drops for the nose, ears or eyes, or creams, ointments and lotions applied on the skin. Some companies also manufacture anaesthetics and contrast media used to visualize body structures using x-rays or nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
• Textile industry is the name given to the sector of the economy dedicated to the production of clothes, thread, fiber and related products. Although technically it is a different sector, economic statistics often include the shoe industry as part of the textile industry. Textiles are massive consumer products that are sold in large quantities. The textile industry generates a lot of direct and indirect jobs, it has an important weight in the world economy. It is one of the industrial sectors that generates more disputes, especially in the definition of international trade treaties. Because mainly of its effect on occupation rates.
• Aeronautical industry, aereocommercial industry or aeronautical business, is made up of all activities related to civil air transport including: Operators or airlines, Travel agencies, Airports, Infrastructure and Aircraft Builders. Other related industries include the oil, insurance, tourism and security industry. The aereocommercial industry is of large sales volumes and low profit margins. It has high fixed costs and a very variable demand, sensitive to the cycles of the economy and external factors. It is a very competitive market, which encourages price wars and competitions for itineraries, breaking those who do not have a smart business strategy based on flexibility and efficiency. In fact, the industry has accumulated millions of losses in recent years as a result of competition, but also of recent terrorist attacks and rising oil value. It depends on demanding logistics and service, so that technology support is key to offering customer service and internal efficiency. Most of the areas lines carry cargo and passengers.
• Metallurgical industry aims to obtain and treat metals from metallic minerals to non-metallic. It also studies the production of alloys, the quality control of the linked processes and their control against corrosion.
• Chemical industry deals with the extraction and processing of raw materials, both natural and synthetic, and their transformation into other substances with different characteristics than they originally had, to meet the needs of people by improving their quality of life. Its main objective is to produce a good quality product at the lowest possible cost, and to try to cause the least possible damage to the medium.
• Sex industry is the term given to the business industry of companies that give sex workers work in various capacities, generally related to which it is described as entertainment for adults that includes eroticism, since it includes a series of forms of entertainment related to sex, is not considered suitable for children. The sex industry represents an important part of the world economy and has been credited with technological advances to multimedia, such as home videos, DVD, pay-por-view, video streaming and videos on demand. Examples of modern types of companies operating in the sex industry are Hustler (a monthly magazine for men); SexTV: The Channel (a digital cable TV channel); randimg.com (a popular web), Artemis (a mega-burde in Germany), and Ann Summers (a success of the British Sex Shop chain).

By consumers

Industries can be classified in different ways, referring to different parameters. In this case, we have classified the types of industries according to the consumers of the product they manufacture. If we follow this type of classification, we get the following industries:

Basic industries

The basic industries take the raw materials and manipulate them until they are transformed into semi-finished products. Later this industry will sell its products to industries that transform these semi-finished products into final products. In this group, the metal and chemical industries stand out. Example: refineries (chemical weighing). These industries also integrate the extractive industry, such as mining, fishing, sugar and coal.

Capital goods industries

The capital goods industries work with these semi-finished products, transforming them into final products, which are normally destined for another industry, because they are goods that complement other goods, although they can also be destined directly for the consumer, if it is a client who wants a specific part of a vehicle, for example, but does not want the entire vehicle. Here we can find the metal industries that manufacture machines and transport material.

Consumer goods industries

They use different types of semi-finished products and other resources that are not normally large, to produce goods that go directly for consumption by the population or for trade in other countries with transportation. It is the type of industry that we know more about, because it is one of the most, such as food, perfumery industries... These industries are normally located near urban areas or where there is the most population, because it is where there are markets and their consumers.

Different industries:

• Manufacturing industry
• Heavy industry: uses large factories in which large quantities of raw material and energy are worked.
• Fabril industry:
  • Automotive: is responsible for the design, development, manufacture, assembly, marketing, repair and sale of cars.
  • foundry
  • Siderúrgicas:
• Cemeteries: they manufacture cement and concrete from industrial rocks.
  • machinery workshops
• Light industry: transforms raw materials, raw or semi-processed, into products that are directly intended for the consumption of individuals and service companies.
• Peletera: it is responsible for transforming skins (including leather) into footwear, clothing, among other products.
• Cultural Industry: a group of sectors responsible for the creation, production, exhibition, distribution and/or dissemination of cultural services and goods
• Communication Industry: It includes companies covering the traditional media, such as radio, press and television, digital communications or networks of interaction and corporate communications, the latter is basically responsible for the business sector.
• Armamentística: comprises commercial and government agencies dedicated to research, development, production, military and defence services and facilities.
• Tip industry: is the one that uses the most advanced and recent technologies.
• Robotics: dedicated to the creation of robots.
• Computer: they do software work.
• Astronautics: perform lunar or spatial trips or studies.
• Mechanics: they produce spare parts for machines.
• Energy:Produces energy

Industrial policy

Manufacturing Economics

Emerging technologies have provided a new growth of employment opportunities in advanced manufacturing in the manufacturing belt of the United States. The manufacturing industry provides important material support for the national infrastructure and for national defense.

On the other hand, most manufacturing can have significant social and environmental costs. The costs of cleaning up hazardous waste, for example, can outweigh the benefits of a product that generates it. Hazardous materials can expose workers to health risks. These costs are already well known and efforts are being made to address them by improving efficiency, reducing waste, using 'industrial symbiosis' and eliminating harmful chemicals.

Negative manufacturing costs can also be addressed legally. Developed countries regulate manufacturing activity with labor laws and environmental policy|environmental laws. Around the world, manufacturers may be subject to pollution regulations and taxes to offset the environmental costs of manufacturing activities. Craft unions and guilds have played a historic role in negotiating workers' rights and wages. Environmental laws and labor protections that are available in developed nations may not be available in the third world. Tort law and product liability impose additional costs on manufacturing. These are significant dynamics in the ongoing process, which has occurred over the past few decades, of offshoring of manufacturing industries to 'developing world' economies, where production costs are significantly lower than in the economies of the "developed world".

Security

The manufacturing industry presents unique health and safety challenges and has been recognized by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) as a priority industry sector in the National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA) to identify and provide intervention strategies in relation to health and safety problems at work.

Industrial heritage

Bridge of Vizcaya, Euskadi

Industrial heritage, according to the TICCIH (The International Committee For The Conservation Of The Industrial Heritage), is made up of the remains of industrial culture that have historical, technological, social, architectural value or scientific. These remnants consist of buildings and machinery, workshops, mills and factories, mines and places for processing and refining, warehouses and deposits, places where energy is generated, transmitted and used, means of transport and all its infrastructure, as well as places where social activities related to the industry take place, such as housing, religious worship or education.

Industrial heritage, therefore, includes not only buildings (factories, workshops, mills...), architectural structures and production machinery (ships, chimneys, locomotives...), but also transport routes and communication through which the raw materials arrived and the products were marketed (bridges, railways, stations,...), residences, associative centers (athenaes,...) and worker assistance (hospitals, sanatoriums...), public services (markets, schools,...) and, ultimately, the same landscapes modified by extractive and industrial activity.

List of countries by manufacturing production

These are the top 50 countries by total value of manufacturing output in US dollars for their noted year according to the World Bank:

Classification	Country/Region	Millions of $US	Year
	World	13.809.122	2019
1	China	3.896.345	2019
2	United States	2.317.176	2018
3	Japan	1.027.967	2018
4	Germany	747.731	2019
5	South Korea	416.903	2019
6	India	394.531	2019
7	Italy	298.442	2019
8	France	266.634	2019
9	United Kingdom	243.114	2019
10	Russia	222.544	2019
11	Indonesia	220.503	2019
12	Mexico	217.852	2019
13	Brazil	173.668	2019
14	Spain	154.833	2019
15	Canada	151.724	2016
16	Turkey	143.017	2019
17	Thailand	137.544	2019
18	Switzerland	131.718	2019
19	Ireland	119.868	2019
20	Poland	100.011	2019
21	Netherlands	99.648	2019
22	Saudi Arabia	99.438	2019
23	Australia	78.657	2019
24	Malaysia	78.279	2019
25	Austria	74.710	2019
26	Singapore	73.677	2019
27	Philippines	69.568	2019
28	Sweden	69.262	2019
29	Belgium	63.569	2019
30	Venezuela	58.236	2014
31	Argentina	57.726	2019
32	Bangladés	57.284	2019
33	Czech Republic	55.270	2019
34	Iran	53.417	2017
35	Nigeria	51.634	2019
36	Egypt	48.241	2019
37	Puerto Rico	47.834	2018
38	Denmark	45.507	2019
39	Israel	44.314	2018
40	Vietnam	43.172	2019
41	Romania	42.453	2019
42	South Africa	41.400	2019
43	Algeria	41.278	2019
44	Finland	38.670	2019
45	United Arab Emirates	36.727	2019
46	Colombia	35.439	2019
47	Pakistan	34.658	2019
48	Oman	30.283	2018
49	Hungary	29.349	2019
50	Peru	28.733	2018