Manufacturing
What kind of job do you have?
I am the manager at a manufacturing company.
What is manufacturing?
It is the use of machines, tools and labor to make goods for use or sale.
What does your company manufacture?
Our company uses raw materials to create engine parts.
Do you sell your engine parts directly to consumers?
A small amount of our finished products are sold to consumers.
And the rest are sold to other manufacturers.
Yes, and they use our finished products for more complex products like airplanes.
Does your company use a specific kind of manufacturing?
Our factory uses mass production to create our parts.
And what is mass production?
It is the production of large amounts of products, usually with the aid of an assembly line.
I thought that assembly lines only had people on them.
No, many assembly lines use machines that are controlled by people.
So the machines do the work, and the people just make sure it is done right.
Exactly, and that is how our goods are produced from raw materials.
How do you know that every product comes out right?
Every manufacturing company has some sort of quality control.
It checks to finished products to make sure they are correct.
Quality control can’t check every single piece, because it is a system of checking random pieces.
So some bad products might make it out the door.
Yes, but it is very unlikely.
With manufacturing, there is some risk, but overall it is very important to society.
Exactly, because without manufacturing, we would not have the goods that we depend on.