In 2024 the Republic of Korea had the world's highest robot density, 1,220 industrial robots per 10,000 employees, as of November 2026. It grew about 7% a year since 2019. Its electronics and automotive industries are the two largest customers for industrial robots. Amazon's Hercules is a drive unit that finds and brings pods of items from areas of the fulfillment center to employees who pick out items for customer orders. It makes its own decisions about how it moves but takes overall direction from centralized planning software, as of November 2026. In 1834 the Lowell mills cut wages by 25%. The women responded with a strike and formed a labor union called the Factory Girls Association. The strike did not succeed. They struck again in 1836 over housing rates.

After Ford raised pay, Ford claimed that its turnover rate of 31.9% in 1913 decreased to 1.4% in 1915. Ford offered nearly three times the wages paid at other unskilled manufacturing plants. Toyota published an official description of its production system for the first time in 1992. It names eight kinds of waste, called muda. They include overproduction, waiting, transport, excess inventory, movement and making defective products. Just-in-time focuses on inventory, receiving goods only as needed. Lean goes further; it cuts cycle time, flow time and throughput time across the whole system.

Electrification of factories began around 1900. At first big motors drove long line shafts. Once small motors were available, factories switched to a motor at each machine. Getting rid of line shafts freed factory layout to be more efficient. Merritt Roe Smith and Robert Gordon found that Whitney's guns were costly and handmade. So the sources say he did not achieve interchangeable parts. W. Edwards Deming, known as the father of the quality movement, helped revolutionize Japan's industry after World War II. Industry 4.0 is closely associated with the smart factory. It is a manufacturing environment with advanced sensors, embedded software, robotics and connected systems. Smart factories use big data collected by Internet of Things sensors, as of November 2026.

An IBM Institute for Business Value study found that smart manufacturing can improve production defect detection by as much as 50%, as of November 2026. Chicago meatpacking plants, from 1867, are believed to be among the first industrial assembly lines in the United States. Workers stood at fixed stations, and a pulley system brought the meat to each person to do one task. About 74% of US manufacturing firms have fewer than 20 employees, as of 2026. Average annual earnings for manufacturing employees were $106,691, according to the National Association of Manufacturers.

The National Association of Manufacturers reports that US manufacturing accounted for 52% of all private-sector research and development in the US. It also says US manufactured goods worth $1.7 trillion were exported in 2025. More than 15 million Model Ts were made. They reached 9,000 to 10,000 cars a day in 1925, or 2 million a year; the price was just $260. The Volkswagen Beetle passed the Model T total production in 1972. In Toyota's loop, each step keeps a small store of finished parts. The next step picks up what it needs, then quickly refills it. Only what is needed is made. That is the heart of just-in-time. These are figures as of November 2026.

Words to know

• turnover: workers leaving
• muda: waste
• inventory: stock on hand
• wages: pay for work