Main Uses of the term
The term industrial has two related basic uses. On the one hand, industrial refers to everything that belongs to or is related to the industry. And on the other hand, the word is used to designate the individual who owns an industry or who lives and earns a living through the exercise of industrial activities.
The transformation of raw materials into products
On your side, an industry, will be that set of processes and activities whose primary purpose is to transform raw materials into mass-produced products. There are many different types of industries which will be determined by the products they manufacture. That is, the automotive industry is dedicated to the production of automobiles, the food industry to the manufacture of products that will be used for food, among many others.
Meanwhile, these industries, in order to obtain, transport and transform these natural products will need, on the one hand, a series of equipment and machinery and, on the other hand, human resources to manipulate and execute them in those cases that are necessary, to to be able to transform those raw materials from which they use. And this transformation from raw material to product will be popularly designated as manufacturing.
Industrial revolution, a pivotal event in industry
From practically its origin, man has had the need to transform the elements of nature in order to take advantage of them in order to satisfy some need, for which it could be said that since man inhabits the planet, industry has existed, however, The radical change that took place at the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century with respect to the process of transformation of the resources of nature and which is known worldwide as the Industrial Revolution is that it has been decided to mark this moment as the formal birth of the industry. Because without a doubt there was a before and after this historical event.
The fundamental change brought about by the industrial revolution is given by the reduction of the work time necessary to transform a resource into a useful product. Thanks to the implementation of what would be called capitalist mode of production, the benefit would be obtained, increasing income and reducing costs, because from the Industrial Revolution, industry and manufacturing activities replaced manual labor by mechanizing most of the productive processes that before this moment were carried out by hand by human beings.
With this, a large number of technological, economic, social and cultural transformations occurred and were experienced, which of course affected the quality and comfort of life of the population.
For example, industrial design and in order to satisfy the demand for machinery of all kinds, is the discipline that was commissioned and dedicated to the creation and development of industrial products that from that moment were capable of being created on a large scale and serially.
Benefits and Disadvantages of Industrialization
One of the great consequences that the Industrial Revolution brings, as we have already pointed out lines above, is serial production, which of course entails great benefits in economic matters, especially for the owners of the means of production, since with the introduction of the machine will be able to obtain multiple copies of the products in less time and at a lower cost.
Now, we cannot ignore that this brought about, in some products, the lack of originality, a fact that of course attacked the uniqueness that was traditionally attributed to them.
This is the main argument put forward by the detractors of series production, the absence of personality and at some point also of quality, something that is usually attributed especially to those handmade products.
The valuation of the handmade
At present and in the face of the flood of products of all kinds that are produced in a serial way, artisan products, which have the opposite, that particular gift that being made by the hands of a person and not by a machine, are certainly being demanded and claimed by consumers with great predilection over those produced in series by machines.
In some way we could say that a reverse social process is being experienced to that which occurred at the gates of the Industrial Revolution, where the novelty of being able to find much-needed products easily and quickly made the industrial process advance to incredible levels that clearly we can appreciate ourselves in today.
And of course, as a counterpart we find that need to return, even with some products, to that past that proposed more original, spontaneous and natural things.
