factory, place of production characterized by wage labor, the use of machinery, and the division of labor. The large-scale use of machinery differentiates factory production from simple manufacture, and the division of labor sets it apart from even the most elaborate handicraft establishments. Standardized goods are produced and sometimes sold more cheaply by the factory system, and occasionally the goods are better than those made by artisans. The factory system makes possible huge increases in output per man-hour though at the same time division of labor deprives individual workers of much of their sense of creativity. However, in the 19th and first half of the 20th cent., the factory system gave rise to serious social problems, some of which persist. The tedious routine of assembly line work resulted in boredom and frustration among the workers; this could reduce productivity and product quality. The concentration of large plants and factories in urban areas also helped create urban congestion, pollution, slum dwellings and traffic jams. To minimize these problems, employers have attempted to increase productivity and quality of product by introducing robots to perform some of the tedious operations, by introducing systems that reduce the tedium of assembly line work, and by involving workers in the plant management. Since the 1960s, the closing of factories in urban areas in the United States has reduced environmental pollution and other social problems associated with factories, but has also created decreased employment opportunities for unskilled workers. Since the 1960s, factory production has been globalized, creating goods that are assembled in more than one country. Global production has also induced multinational corporations to move their factories out of industrial countries to areas with lower overhead and cheaper labor. Because of the importance of factories to an area's economy, local governments in the United States have offered subsidies to encourage companies to build or maintain factories in their areas. In 1988, Congress passed legislation requiring large employers to provide notice before closing a plant. See automation and division of labor.

Structure in which work is organized to meet the need for production on a large scale usually with power-driven machinery. In the 17th–18th century, the domestic system of work in Europe began giving way to larger units of production, and capital became available for investment in industrial enterprises. The movement of population from country to city also contributed to change in work methods. Mass production, which transformed the organization of work, came about by the development of the machine-tool industry. With precision equipment, large numbers of identical parts could be produced at low cost and with a small workforce. The assembly line was first widely used in the U.S. meat-packing industry; Henry Ford designed an automobile assembly line in 1913. By mid-1914, chassis assembly time had fallen from 1212 man-hours to 93 man-minutes. Some countries, particularly in Asia and South America, began industrializing in the 1970s and later. Seealso American System of manufacture.

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A factory (previously manufactory) or manufacturing plant is an industrial building where workers manufacture goods or supervise machines processing one product into another. Most modern factories have large warehouses or warehouse-like facilities that contain heavy equipment used for assembly line production. Archetypally, factories gather and concentrate resources — workers, capital and plant.

History of the factory

China

Many believed that ancient China had been the first to create factories. In ancient China, imperial and private workshops, mills, and small manufactories had been employed since the Eastern Zhou Dynasty (771-221 BC), as noted in the historical text of the Zhou Li. During the medieval Song Dynasty (960-1279 AD), independent and government sponsored industries were developed to meet the needs of a growing population that had reached over 100 million. For example, for the printing of paper money alone, the Song court established several government-run factories in the cities of Huizhou, Chengdu, Hangzhou, and Anqi. The size of the workforce employed in these paper money factories were quite large, as it was recorded in 1175 AD that the factory at Hangzhou alone employed more than a thousand workers a day. The Chinese iron industry was also expanded during the Song Dynasty, with a sixfold increase in per capita cast iron output between the years 806 and 1078 AD, meaning an overall weight of 127,000,000 kg (125,000 t) of cast iron product from state-run facilities was forged in the latter year alone.

Islamic world

The first industrial complex for glass and pottery production was built in Ar-Raqqah, Syria, in the 8th century. Extensive experimentation was carried out at the complex, which was two kilometres in length, and a variety of innovative high-purity glass were developed there. Two other similar complexes have also been discovered, and nearly three hundred new chemical recipes for glass are known to have been produced at all three sites. The first glass factories were thus built by Muslim craftsmen in the medieval Islamic world. The first glass factories in Europe were later built in the 11th century by Egyptian craftsmen in Corinth, Greece.

The first factory milling installations were built by Muslim engineers throughout every city and urban community in the Muslim world. For example, the factory milling complex in 10th century Baghdad could produce 10 tonnes of flour every day. The first large milling installations in Europe were built in 12th century Islamic Spain. The first sugar refineries were also built by Muslim engineers. They were first driven by water mills, and then windmills from the 9th and 10th centuries in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran.

Western world

Although large mills and manufactories were established in ancient Rome, the Venice Arsenal provides one of the first examples of a factory in the modern sense of the word. Founded in 1104 in Venice, Italy, several hundred years before the Industrial Revolution, it mass-produced ships on assembly lines using manufactured parts. The Venice Arsenal apparently produced nearly one ship every day and, at its height, employed 16,000 people.

Many historians regard Matthew Boulton's Soho Manufactory (established in 1761 in Birmingham) as the first modern factory. (Other claims might be made for John Lombe's silk mill in Derby (1721), or Richard Arkwright's Cromford Mill (1771)—purpose built to fit the equipment it held and taking the material through the various manufacturing processes.) One historian, Jack Weatherford, contends that the first factory was in Potosí, for processing silver ingot slugs into coins, because there was so much silver being mined close by. . See City and Factory Life for more background concerning conditions of work.

British colonies in the late 18th century built factories simply as buildings where a large number of workers gathered to perform hand labor, usually in textile production. This proved more efficient – for administration and for the distribution of raw materials to individual workers – than earlier methods of manufacturing such as cottage industries or the putting-out system.

Cotton mills used inventions such as the steam engine and the power loom to pioneer the industrial factory of the 19th century, where precision machine tools and replaceable parts allowed greater efficiency and less waste.

Between 1820 and 1850, the non-mechanized factories supplanted the traditional artisanal shops as the predominant form of manufacturing institution. Even though the theory on why and how the non-mechanized factories gradually replaced the small artisan shops is still ambiguous, what is apparent is that the larger-scale factories enjoyed technological gains and advance in efficiency over the small artisan shops. In fact, the larger scale forms of factory establishments were more favorable and advantageous over the small artisan shops in terms of competition for survival.

Henry Ford further revolutionized the factory concept in the early 20th century, with the innovation of mass production. Highly specialized workers situated alongside a series of rolling ramps would build up a product such as (in Ford's case) an automobile. This concept dramatically decreased production costs for virtually all manufactured goods and brought about the age of consumerism.

In the mid- to late 20th century, industrialized countries introduced next-generation factories with two improvements:

1. Advanced statistical methods of quality control, pioneered by the American mathematician William Edwards Deming, whom his home country initially ignored. Quality control turned Japanese factories into world leaders in cost-effectiveness and production quality.
2. Industrial robots on the factory floor, introduced in the late 1970s. These computer-controlled welding arms and grippers could perform simple tasks such as attaching a car door quickly and flawlessly 24 hours a day. This too cut costs and improved speed.

Some speculation as to the future of the factory includes scenarios with rapid prototyping, nanotechnology, and orbital zero-gravity facilities.

Siting the factory

Before the advent of mass transportation, factories' needs for ever-greater concentrations of workers meant that they typically grew up in an urban setting or fostered their own urbanization. Industrial slums developed, and reinforced their own development through the interactions between factories, as when one factory's output or waste-product became the raw materials of another factory (preferably nearby). Canals and railways grew as factories spread, each clustering around sources of cheap energy, available materials and/or mass markets. The exception proved the rule: even greenfield factory sites such as Bournville, founded in a rural setting, developed its own housing and profited from convenient communications networks.

Regulation curbed some of the worst excesses of industrialization's factory-based society, a series of Factory Acts leading the way in Britain. Trams, automobiles and town planning encouraged the separate development of industrial suburbs and residential suburbs, with workers commuting between them.

Though factories dominated the Industrial Era, the growth in the service sector eventually began to dethrone them: the locus of work in general shifted to central-city office towers or to semi-rural campus-style establishments, and many factories stood deserted in local rust belts.

The next blow to the traditional factories came from globalization. Manufacturing processes (or their logical successors, assembly plants) in the late 20th century re-focussed in many instances on Special Economic Zones in developing countries or on maquiladoras just across the national boundaries of industrialized states. Further re-location to the least industrialized nations appears possible as the benefits of out-sourcing and the lessons of flexible location apply in the future.

Governing the factory

Much of management theory developed in response to the need to control factory processes. Assumptions on the hierarchies of unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled workers and their supervisors and managers still linger on; however an example of a more contemporary approach to work design applicable to manufacturing facilities can be found in Socio-Technical Systems (STS).

See Further Articles

Carroll, S & Gillen, D (1987) 'Are the classical management functions useful in describing managerial work?' Academy of Management Review. v 12 n 1, p38-51

Peterson, T (2004) 'Ongoing legacy of R.L. Katz: an updated typology of management skills', Management Decision. v 42 n10, p1297-1308

Mintzberg, H (1975) 'The manager's job: Folklore and fact' , Harvard Business Review, v 53 n 4, July - August, p49-61

Hales, C (1999) 'Why do managers do what they do? Reconciling evidence and theory in accounts of managerial work', British Journal of Management, v 10 n4, p335-350

Mintzberg, H (1994) 'Rounding out the Managers job', Sloan Management Review, v 36 n 1 p 11-26

Rodrigues, C (2001) 'Fayol’s 14 principles then and now: A framework for managing today’s organizations effectively', Management Decision, v 39 n10, p 880-889

Twomey, D. F. (2006) 'Designed emergence as a path to enterprise', Emergence, Complexity & Organization, Vol. 8 Issue 3, p12-23.

McDonald, G (2000) Business ethics: practical proposals for organisations Journal of Business Ethics. v 25(2) p 169-185

See also

• List of production topics/ideas
• Manufacturing
• Recovered factory
• Industrial railway
• Software factory
• Industrial Revolution
• Factory farm

Notes

References

• Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 5, Part 1. Taipei: Caves Books, Ltd.

External links

• Qualitionary - Legal Definitions - Factory
• Qualitionary - Legal Definitions - Plant