Hardware: Traditional hardware products, also known as "hardware". Refers to gold, silver, copper, iron, tin five metals. By manual processing can be made into knives, swords and other art or metal devices. The hardware of modern society is more extensive, such as hardware tools, hardware parts, daily hardware, building hardware and security supplies. Most hardware products are not final consumer goods.
History into the modern industrial society, metal - hardware products industry is developing rapidly, hardware industry in the development of the national economy has played an immeasurable role, hardware products have become an indispensable industrial link in industrial manufacturing.
But as a supporting product of industrial manufacturing, semi-finished products and tools used in the production process and so on. Only a small part of daily hardware products are necessary tools for people's lives.
In the National economic industry classification of the National Bureau of Statistics, manufacturing is the third largest industry. These include: the production of means of living, such as: agricultural and sideline products, food and beverage, tobacco, textile and clothing leather, wood furniture, printing and recreational goods and pharmaceutical manufacturing; Manufacturing of means of production, such as: petrochemical, chemical fiber, rubber plastics, non-metallic products manufacturing, metal smelting and processing, metal products manufacturing, general equipment manufacturing, industry special equipment manufacturing, as well as transportation equipment manufacturing, electrical equipment, communication electronics and so on.
The related products in the classification of metal products in the manufacturing industry and general parts in the manufacturing of general equipment constitute the "hardware" in the usual sense. It can be seen that "hardware" is not an existing industry category, but a cross combination of the above several metal products - hardware products. In the entire manufacturing industry, the responsibility of "hardware" is to provide parts and production tools for manufacturing enterprises, rather than as industry-specific equipment for final use. In spite of this, we cannot deny the important role of "hardware" in the social production process: "hardware" and manufacturing are intertwined with each other as an inseparable whole.