Division of labour is the separation of work into different categories or tasks, each category or task being carried out by different groups of workers. Although the principle was touched upon by Xenophon, the term "division of labour" was used for the first time in Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations.
Smith, who assessed that division of labour in a pin factory, could increase output by 24,000 per cent, said: "The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is anywhere directed, seem to have been the effects of division of labour."