They engineer and build plants, and make factory machinery for the automotive industry, in particular paint shops.

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As a second-generation oilman, Zhang began working in 1990 for the First Machinery Factory of Huabei Petroleum Administration Bureau, a state oil subsidiary.

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Official figures show investment by the private sector in fixed assets such as factory buildings and machinery grew nearly threefold between 2000 and 2005 (see chart).

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The software will also allow Boeing to simulate the way the plane will be assembled in the factory before a single piece of machinery is purchased.

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At its factory in suburban Seoul, Sunstar Machinery Co.

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Machinery was stripped out, the factory demolished, the site developed to a design by Renzo Piano, a leading Italian architect, and the Academia Barilla opened in 2004, its basement housing the library.

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In economic data, orders for factory goods rose in February, a hair short of expectations, on rising demand for machinery, computers and aircraft.

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Twenty jobs have also been cut at a drug factory in Ceredigion, and in north Wales 20 jobs will go in Llangefni and Denbigh at a farm machinery firm.

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" Caterpillar, the giant Peoria-based maker of heavy construction machinery, made the same point more vividly when it declined in February to locate a new factory in Illinois, specifically citing concern about the state's "business climate and overall fiscal health.

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