The factory system is a method of manufacturing whereby workers and manufacturing equipment are centralized in a factory, the work is supervised and structured through a division of labor, and the manufacturing process is mechanized.[1][2][3] Because of the high capital cost of machinery and factory buildings, factories are typically privately owned by wealthy individuals or corporations who employ the operative labor. Use of machinery with the division of labor reduced the required skill-level of workers and also increased the output per worker.
The factory system was first adopted by successive entrepreneurs in Britain at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the late-eighteenth century and later spread around the world.[4][5] It replaced the putting-out system (domestic system). The main characteristic of the factory system is the use of machinery,[citation needed] originally powered by water or steam and later by electricity. Other characteristics of the system mostly derive from the use of machinery or economies of scale, the centralization of factories, and standardization of interchangeable parts.
- ^ Geraghty, Thomas M. (2003). "Technology, Organization and Complementarity: The Factory System in the British Industrial Revolution". The Journal of Economic History. 63 (2): 536–541. ISSN 0022-0507. JSTOR 3132451.
- ^ Pollard, Sidney (1963). "Factory Discipline in the Industrial Revolution". The Economic History Review. 16 (2): 254–271. doi:10.2307/2598639. ISSN 0013-0117. JSTOR 2598639.
- ^ Compare: W. C. T. (2016) [1896]. "Factory System". In Palgrave, R. H. Inglis (ed.). Palgrave's Dictionary of Political Economy. Vol. 2 (reprint ed.). Springer. p. 9. ISBN 9781349103584. Retrieved 18 March 2023. - "The factory system is [...] a system of production carried out in [factories]", with a factory defined as "an establishment where several workmen are collected for the purpose of obtaining greater and cheaper conventiences for labour than they could procure individually at their homes, for producing results by their combined efforts which they could not accomplish separately and for preventing the loss occasioned by carrying articles from place to place during the several processes necessary to complete their manufacture."
- ^ Walker 1993, pp. 187–88.
- ^ Hutt, W. H. (1926). "The Factory System of the Early 19th Century". Economica (16): 78–93. doi:10.2307/2548551. ISSN 0013-0427. JSTOR 2548551.