In a factory, goods are produced or an energy source is transformed.
A factory is a space that has the infrastructure and devices required to produce certain goods or transform an energy source. The verb manufacture , for its part, refers to obtaining products in series .
In order to perfectly develop and understand the meaning of the word that concerns us now, we have to previously underline its etymological origin. Specifically, this is found in Latin and more precisely in the term facere , which could be translated as "to make."
Manufacturing usually involves a transformation of one or more raw materials to create a product that can be marketed or used. This processing can be done through machines or through manual work; In the latter case, we speak of artisanal manufacturing .
At a general level, manufacturing always involves mass and serial production (many standardized examples of the same product are manufactured) and the use of a production chain (which allows great efficiency to be achieved).
Operation of a factory
In this sense, we have to make it clear that in a factory raw materials can be transformed into products in two clearly differentiated ways. Thus, on the one hand, we would have the aforementioned serial production , which is that through which a high number of exactly identical copies of a product in question is achieved.
And on the other hand there would be the so-called chain production , which allows obtaining a specific product in a quick and cheap way where the workers of said factory are each assigned a specific and repetitive task that is complementary to that of the rest of their colleagues.
A factory can operate in different ways.
Movie "Modern Times"
This last type of production , which was an authentic revolution in the industrial field proposed and developed by Frederick Taylor and Henry Ford respectively, can be known in depth through one of the classic films in the history of cinema . We are referring to "Modern Times" .
In 1936, this feature film was released, directed by and starring Charles Chaplin . An hour and a half is the time that said production lasts in which you can perfectly appreciate how chain production works, what it meant for the industrial field and what consequences it brought with it for the worker himself.
The factory as a physical space or virtual place
The traditional meaning of the term associates factories with the physical places ( buildings ) where raw materials are worked with. For example: in a stocking factory, there will be various machines that allow cotton to be transformed into the fabric necessary to develop the stockings. It is possible that, to produce a stocking, more than one factory is involved (one for knitting and another for dyeing).
The new economy , however, has extended the use of the concept to virtual places where ideas or intellectual products are converted into services . In this way, a software factory can be used to refer to an office where a group of people is dedicated to programming tasks. It does not matter that a physical product (such as a DVD) does not come out of this factory, but that manufacturing is the human task of systems development.