Talk:Manufacturing/Archive 1

Rationale for clean-up tag
I agree with whomever placed the clean up tag - this article needs cleaning up! This article isn't even an article, it is a poorly constructed outline of an article. It doesn't even follow the guidelines for a quality list. There are see also sections sprinkled throughout, and list items are referred to as content, with the reader left to guess or hunt down how the items apply. What the article needs is for the headings to be rearranged in a logical order, the existing text rewritten, and new prose added to fill each section. All the see also lists should be moved to an actual see also section at the end of the article, along with all left-over links that aren't used in the prose (unless they are used as relevant and properly introduced and structured embedded lists). I would do this, but I'm already taking on the clean up and completion of the entire Lists of basic topics collection (and have hijacked this "article" for that purpose). Thank you. --Nexus Seven 09:07, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

P.S.: it might be better to just start over with a stub. --Nexus Seven 09:07, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Manufacturing
This article is about manufacturing. Sorry for those who don't like manufacturing, suggest editing the green articles. Manufacturing deserves an explanation, not vandalism by those who think they are above it. On another point, corporations are the ones involved in manufacturing, so referring to them as manufacturers is legitimate information.
 * The changes Thomas Paine has made unencylopaedic; it reads like a pamphlet written by lobbyists for manufacturing companies! I have re-edited to those areas that merit encyclopaedic treatment, and to attain balance. More specifically:
 * The description of service sector as "wealth consuming" is eccentric and perjorative. For example, no such assumption underlies the way all major countries calculate GDP! David Friedman only just qualifies as an "economist". He trained as a physicist and many of his contributions are in law and politics. Either way, he's certainly a polemical outlier from mainstream academic views.
 * "Marginal GDP" growth is not a well-defined term (do you mean the proportional second derivative of GDP?!) - its relationship with manufactured exports is unclear or irrelevant.
 * That taxation of an industry can fund public services is trivial and not worthy of mention. --Nmcmurdo 18:15, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Wealth consuming and wealth producing are economically accurate descriptions, not perjoratives. The errosion of manufacturing is economically deleterious in the West, just as the expansion of it in China is economically beneficial to China. Nations which exporters more tradable goods have higher marginal GDP growth, that is the essense of Friedman's point and many economists would concur. -TP
 * These are obscure, cranky arguments that have almost no following amongst serious economists. Taking the 'wealth destroying' point first. The logical implication of this is that most of the economic activity that takes place in the richest countries in the world is useless or counter-productive, and yet these countries somehow continually fluke their way to being richer than all the others! The mainstream view (e.g. as used in the calculation of GDP - fairly 'orthodox' concept!) is that value is best measured by markets, and as such the service sectors in advanced economies generate more value than any other sector.

On whether deindustrialization is economically deleterious, in some cases it might be (e.g. due to real exchange rate disequilibrium). But in general it is a process observed in almost all major economies as they become richer. If you look closely at the statistics, you'll see that China is now deindustrializing, as one would expect as a result of its rapid economic growth. These processes are now fairly well understood - key works are by Baumol, Obsteld & Rogoff, and in the UK, Bob Rowthorn. Steve Nickell (LSE & ex. Monetary Policy Cttee) did an interesting paper on this subject for the OECD in 2004. For a historical view in the UK, I can thoroughly recommend Feinstein et. al. The 'unorthodox' tag for people like David Friedman is essential if they are to be mentioned at all.--Nmcmurdo 01:21, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
 * The developed countries are not necessarily rich because of their service industries. They are also the centers of international banking and finance, and the home countries of most transnational corporations. Thus they control, and receive some of the profits from, a great deal of economic activity that is carried out physically in other places. --Ong saluri (talk) 07:40, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Manufacturing and 'Wealth Creation'
Have looked up some work on this issue. What characters like David Friedman are doing is exhuming an old conceptual error from classical political economy, concerning the distinction between 'productive' and 'unproductive' labour. The former typically referred to production that was capable of storage and exchange - and hence could contribute to the accumulation of wealth and the capital stock. The error arose due to confusion over the timing of consumnption (the value inherent in 'wealth' can only sensibly be regarded as a value attributed to deferred consumption, rather than possessing a value in itself - an idea Adam Smith flirted with but never quite set out convincingly.) Over the last century-or-so the overwheming majority of economists have thus discarded the distinction between 'productive' and 'unproductive' economic activity, by properly recongising that consumption is the ultimate end of economic activity, regardless of its timing (this is neatly spelled out by by Martin Weitzman in 1975.) Peter Hill offered a good review of the history of this discussion in the Canadian Journal a year or two back. http://www.csls.ca/journals/sisspp/v32n2_09.pdf

Manufacturing Categories?
How are radio and software engineering manufacturing subcategories? Neither of them involve raw materials unless you consider bandwidth and computer storage raw materials. Bit of a stretch I'd say. Oicumayberight 07:23, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

as in Make magazine...
The term Maker is now commonly used to describe an individual who makes or modifies something him/her-self. It is used interchangibly with a DIYer (Do-it-yourself) as well as Hacker.

This usage of the term Maker has been popularized by Make magazine. I beleive this article should refer to this definition, or there should be another Maker article specifically. cek 07:12, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Is manufacturing always For sale?
In the first paragraphs says: "Manufacturing, a branch of industry, is the application of tools and a processing medium to the transformation of raw materials into finished goods for sale".

Discussion:

For example in the case of manufacturing for self consumption or in the case of communist manufacturing. The goods are not for sale but for distribution. There are many other cases where manufacturing is not for sale. Then, the last two words from the given paragraphs should be removed. --GengisKanhg (my talk) 23:43, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Narrow focus
Manufacturing is defined far too narrowly in the article as it stands. It is not confined to factory production of goods, but describes any production of goods by hand or machine, regardless of the economic context. The word has been in the English language for 400+ years. This article needs a historical perspective, not a static platonic model of manufacturing. The OED defines the noun manufacture as production of goods; an article produced by hand, in a factory, etc. (Includes handiwork, products of physical labor, and machine-made goods.) Producing works of art is not included in the definition, but almost everything else is. -- Rob C (Alarob) 04:39, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I more or less agree. Also the distinction between manufacture and mahinofacture is important but absent from this article. Manufacture can refer to production that involves specialisation of labour, large numbers of workers in a single workplace, specialised tools, and a lot of organisation -- but no machinery. In other words, "manual fabrication." Machinofacture, which came historically later, is the same thing but with steam or water power, or nowadays electricity or fossil fuel, used to drive the tools. In other words, "machine fabrication." --Ong saluri (talk) 07:55, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Since Wikipedia is not a dictionary, this article should have a narrower focus than what is in the dictionary to distinguish manufacturing from design (particularly industrial design) or one-off manufacturing such as prototyping and hobbies. The scope doesn't have to be as narrow as assembly lines or automation, so it could include manual labor manufacturing industries even if it includes sweatshops. Oicumayberight (talk) 09:23, 9 March 2009 (UTC)