First factory to use standardized parts

Originally built around 1104, but extended in about 1320, the Venetian Arsenal was a collection of shipyards located on a 110-acre site in Venice, Italy. It was the first manufacturing factory in the modern world to use standardized and interchangeable parts to build products, in this case ships for the Venetian navy. At its height, it employed around 16,000 people and could make almost one new ship each day. The techniques for pre-fabricating ship parts took over from the hand-made approach to ships that had been acquired from Roman engineering. The new techniques allowed, lighter, faster and more cost-effective ships to be built.