<P> Some of the organizational management concepts needed to create 20th - century mass production, such as scientific management, had been pioneered by other engineers (most of whom are not famous, but Frederick Winslow Taylor is one of the well - known ones), whose work would later be synthesized into fields such as industrial engineering, manufacturing engineering, operations research, and management consultancy . Although after leaving the Henry Ford Company which was rebranded as Cadillac and later was awarded the Dewar Trophy in 1908 for creating interchangeable mass - produced precision engine parts, Henry Ford downplayed the role of Taylorism in the development of mass production at his company . However, Ford management performed time studies and experiments to mechanize their factory processes, focusing on minimizing worker movements . The difference is that while Taylor focused mostly on efficiency of the worker, Ford also substituted for labor by using machines, thoughtfully arranged, wherever possible . </P> <P> The United States Department of War sponsored the development of interchangeable parts for guns produced at the arsenals at Springfield, Massachusetts and Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) in the early decades of the 19th century, finally achieving reliable interchangeability by about 1850 . This period coincided with the development of machine tools, with the armories designing and building many of their own . Some of the methods employed were a system of gauges for checking dimensions of the various parts and jigs and fixtures for guiding the machine tools and properly holding and aligning the work pieces . This system came to be known as armory practice or the American system of manufacturing, which spread throughout New England aided by skilled mechanics from the armories who were instrumental in transferring the technology to the sewing machines manufacturers and other industries such as machine tools, harvesting machines and bicycles . Singer Manufacturing Co., at one time the largest sewing machine manufacturer, did not achieve interchangeable parts until the late 1880s, around the same time Cyrus McCormick adopted modern manufacturing practices in making harvesting machines . </P> <P> Mass production benefited from the development of materials such as inexpensive steel, high strength steel and plastics . Machining of metals was greatly enhanced with high speed steel and later very hard materials such as tungsten carbide for cutting edges . Fabrication using steel components was aided by the development of electric welding and stamped steel parts, both which appeared in industry in about 1890 . Plastics such as polyethylene, polystyrene and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) can be easily formed into shapes by extrusion, blow molding or injection molding, resulting in very low cost manufacture of consumer products, plastic piping, containers and parts . </P> <P> An influential article that helped to frame and popularize the 20th century's definition of mass production appeared in a 1926 Encyclopædia Britannica supplement . The article was written based on correspondence with Ford Motor Company and is sometimes credited as the first use of the term . </P>

Where is a lot of the world’s mass production of goods located