Manufacturing

Manufacturing is the production of products for use or sale using labour and machines, tools, chemical and biological processing, or formulation, and is the essence of secondary industry. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial design, in which raw materials from primary industry are transformed into finished goods on a large scale. Such finished goods may be sold to other manufacturers for the production of other more complex products (such as aircraft, household appliances, furniture, sports equipment or automobiles), or distributed via the tertiary industry to end users and consumers (usually through wholesalers, who in turn sell to retailers, who then sell them to individual customers).

Modern manufacturing includes all intermediate processes required in the production and integration of a product's components. Some industries, such as semiconductor and steel manufacturers use the term fabrication instead.

Manufacturing is a very simple business; the owner buys the raw material or component parts to manufacture a finished product. To function as a business the manufacturer needs to cover costs, meet demand and make a product to supply the market.