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| Manufacturing is the transformation of raw materials into  finished goods for sale, by means of tools and a  processing medium, and including all intermediate processes involving the production or finishing of  component parts ("semi-manufactures"). It is a large branch of  industry and of  secondary production. Some industries, like  semiconductor and  steel manufacturers use the term " fabrication".Although  handicraft production has been with us for many millennia, modern-style manufacturing is generally regarded as beginning around  1780 with the British Industrial Revolution, spreading thereafter to Continental Europe and  North America, and subsequently around the  world. Originally, the term applied to commodities or artifacts which were "made by hand".While it remains a huge part of the modern world economy—perhaps a quarter of aggregate world production of  goods and  services—many of the world's wealthier  nations devote an ever smaller proportion of their  workforce to manufacturing activity owing to  relocation of  enterprises to lower-wage countries and the rising proportion of economic activity devoted to service activity. 
 
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