236 Factory

Which country has the highest number of factories in the world?

Matthew Kressy is the founding director of the MIT Integrated Design & Management. He has a lot of experience visiting factories in China and other areas around the world. He discusses with ShaoLan some of the history of global manufacturing and whether or not progress in automation will take jobs away from the manufacturing industry. He moves on to also describe how China has developed an environment where manufacturers are willing to partner with and take risks with entrepreneurs to create new products and in the process, beginning to lead the world in this area.

The Chinese word for “factory” is 工廠/工厂. The first character 工 means “to work” and the second character 廠/厂 means “the yard.” So, the yard where work is done is “the factory” 工廠/工厂. To specify what kind of factory it is, simply add a descriptive word in front of 工廠/工厂.