Noun

(uncountable) The tendency to work persistently.

* {{quote-news, year=2011, date=November 12, work=BBC Sport

, title= International friendly: England 1-0 Spain , passage=England's win was built on industry and discipline, epitomised by the performances of Manchester City's Joleon Lescott in defence and Scott Parker in midfield.}}

(countable, business, economics) Businesses of the same type, considered as a whole.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-01, volume=407, issue=8838, page=71, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= End of the peer show , passage=Finance is seldom romantic. But the idea of peer-to-peer lending comes close. This is an industry that brings together individual savers and lenders on online platforms. Those that want to borrow are matched with those that want to lend.}}

(uncountable, economics) Businesses that produce goods as opposed to services.

* {{quote-book, year=2006, author=(Edwin Black)

, title= Internal Combustion, chapter=2 , passage=But through the oligopoly, charcoal fuel proliferated throughout London's trades and industries .  By the 1200s, brewers and bakers, tilemakers, glassblowers, pottery producers, and a range of other craftsmen all became hour-to-hour consumers of charcoal.}}

(in the singular, economics) The sector of the economy consisting of large-scale enterprises.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-20, volume=408, issue=8845, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Out of the gloom , passage=[Rural solar plant] schemes are of little help to industry or other heavy users of electricity. Nor is solar power yet as cheap as the grid. For all that, the rapid arrival of electric light to Indian villages is long overdue. When the national grid suffers its next huge outage, as it did in July 2012 when hundreds of millions were left in the dark, look for specks of light in the villages.}}

Automated production of material goods{{cite web

, author=(European Parliament) , title= Europarl 2003-09-24: Amended Software Patent Directive , date=2003-09-24 }}.

*

Noun

(en noun)

(obsolete) A doer, maker; a person who does things for another person or organization.

An agent or representative.

* (Christopher Marlowe)

My factor sends me word, a merchant's fled / That owes me for a hundred tun of wine.

*, II.21:

*:And let such as will number the Kings of Castile and Portugall amongst the warlike and magnanimous conquerors, seeke for some other adherent then my selfe, forsomuch as twelve hundred leagues from their idle residence they have made themselves masters of both Indias, onely by the conduct and direction of their factors , of whom it would be knowne whether they durst but goe and enjoy them in person.

* 1644 , (John Milton), (Aeropagitica) :

What does he therefore, but resolvs to give over toyling, and to find himself out som factor , to whose care and credit he may commit the whole managing of his religious affairs; som Divine of note and estimation that must be.

(legal)

# A commission agent.

# A person or business organization that provides money for another's new business venture; one who finances another's business.

# A business organization that lends money on accounts receivable or buys and collects accounts receivable.

One of the elements, circumstances, or influences which contribute to produce a result.

* (Herbert Spencer)

the material and dynamical factors of nutrition

(mathematics) Any of various objects multiplied together to form some whole.

* 1956 , , (The City and the Stars) , p.38:

The first thousand primesthe complete sequence of all those numbers that possessed no factors except themselves and unity.

(root cause analysis) Influence; a phenomenon that affects the nature, the magnitude, and/or the timing of a consequence.

* {{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=May-June, author= Charles T. Ambrose

, title= Alzheimer’s Disease , volume=101, issue=3, page=200, magazine=(American Scientist) , passage=Similar studies of rats have employed four different intracranial resorbable, slow sustained release systems— […]. Such a slow-release device containing angiogenic factors could be placed on the pia mater covering the cerebral cortex and tested in persons with senile dementia in long term studies.}}

(economics) A resource used in the production of goods or services, a factor of production.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-22, volume=407, issue=8841, page=68, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= T time , passage=The ability to shift profits to low-tax countries by locating intellectual property in them

(Scotland) A steward or bailiff of an estate.

(Sir Walter Scott)