Manufacturing in Tacoma, Washington

Manufacturing is the production of products for use or sale, using labor and machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary industry. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high-tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial design, in which raw materials from primary industry are transformed into finished goods on a large scale. Such goods may be sold to other manufacturers for the production of other more complex products (such as aircraft, household appliances, furniture, sports equipment or automobiles), or distributed via the tertiary industry to end users and consumers (usually through wholesalers, who in turn sell to retailers, who then sell them to individual customers). Manufacturing engineering, or the manufacturing process, are the steps through which raw materials are transformed into a final product.