ABSTRACT
It is important to define what manufacturing is and what it is not. In most official statistics, manufacturing sectors appear as industries that produce tangible goods. A number of sub-categories are discerned, defined on the basis of the type of product (like food products, textiles and chemical products). Distinctions can also be based on the complexity of production process, or the size of the series/batches that are produced (for example mass manufacturing versus the production of small series). The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2005) has defined manufacturing according to the technological sophistication. Manufacturing industries are grouped into four categories according to their R&D intensity: high, medium-high, medium-low and low technology. In our study, we define manufacturing as an economic activity in which the output is a tangible, physical product that needs not to be consumed immediately. Unlike services, users do not participate in the production (Illeris, 1996).
