Factory

A factory (previously manufactory) or manufacturing plant is an industrial site, usually consisting of buildings and machinery, or more commonly a complex having several buildings, where workers manufacture goods or operate machines processing one product into another.

Factories arose with the introduction of machinery during the Industrial Revolution when the capital and space requirements became too great for cottage industry or workshops. Early factories that contained small amounts of machinery, such as one or two spinning mules, and fewer than a dozen workers have been called "glorified workshops".

Most modern factories have large warehouses or warehouse-like facilities that contain heavy equipment used for assembly line production. Large factories tend to be located with access to multiple modes of transportation, with some having rail, highway and water loading and unloading facilities.

Factories may either make discrete products or some type of material continuously produced such as chemicals, pulp and paper, or refined oil products. Factories manufacturing chemicals are often called plants and may have most of their equipment – tanks, pressure vessels, chemical reactors, pumps and piping – outdoors and operated from control rooms. Oil refineries have most of their equipment outdoors.

Van

A van is a kind of vehicle used for transporting goods or people. Depending on the type of van it can be bigger or smaller than a truck and SUV, and bigger than an automobile. There is some varying in the scope of the word across the different English-speaking countries. The smallest vans, minivans, are commonly used for transporting people from a family. Larger vans with passenger seats are used for institutional purposes, such as transporting students. Larger vans with only front seats are often used for business purposes, to carry goods and equipment. Specially-equipped vans are used by television stations as mobile studios. Postal services and courier companies use large step vans to deliver packages.

Word origin and usage

Van meaning a type of vehicle arose as a contraction of the word caravan. The early records of van as a vehicle in English are in the mid 19th century meaning a covered wagon for transporting goods (earliest reported record 1829). Caravan with the same meaning has records since the 1670s. A caravan, meaning one wagon, had arisen as an extension or corruption of caravan meaning a convoy of multiple wagons.

Ford Transit

The Ford Transit is a range of light commercial vehicle produced by Ford since 1965. Sold primarily as a cargo van, the Transit is also built as a passenger van (marketed as the Tourneo since 1995), minibus, cutaway van chassis, and as a pickup truck. Over eight million Transit have been sold, making it the third best-selling van of all time and have been produced across five basic platform generations (debuting in 1965, 1978, 1986, 2000, and 2013 respectively).

The first product of the merged Ford of Europe, the Transit was marketed through Western Europe and Australia; by the end of the 20th century, it was marketed nearly globally with the exception of North America until 2013; it replaced the Ford E-Series in 2015. The Transit has been the best-selling light commercial vehicle in Europe for 40 years, and in some countries the term "Transit" has passed into common usage as a generic term applying to any light commercial van in the Transit's size bracket. While initially designed for European consumption, the Transit is now produced in Asia, North America, and Europe for worldwide buyers.

Food Factory

Food Factory is a Canadian television series produced by Cineflix airing in that country on the Food Network, and in the United States on FYI. The show features the industrial production lines of major food companies, mostly in Canada, but also in the United States, and occasionally in other countries. It is co-narrated by Colleen Rusholme and Todd Schick.

Episodes

Season 1 (2012)

Season 2 (2013)

Season 3 (2013-2014)

Season 4 (2014)

Food Factory USA

Between the original program's third and fourth seasons, the first season of Food Factory USA was produced for FYI and featured only U.S. factories. The style of the show, including the theme music, text graphics, and two narrators, is identical to the original three seasons of Food Factory. However, the format is somewhat different, catering to the demands of American programmers by eliminating one of the four segments to make room for more TV commercials, and putting those commercials in the middle of each of the three remaining segments instead of between them. In addition, each break is preceded by a trivia question related to the segment, whose answer is given following the break (similar to other series such as Pawn Stars). In the spring of 2015, a second season began airing on May 23, two at a time each week as with season four of Food Factory. The only noticeable difference is the use of graphical text in various colors (consistent within each episode), instead of the silvery grey used in all four previous seasons of the two series.