A manufacture movement (or manufacture calibre) is a watch movement which is produced according to the production requirements of a manufacture. This means in short that the movement is a proprietary development and designed and produced in-house.
Also see Manufacture.
Before the quartz crisis this procedure was not unusual, and many or even most manufacturers of mechanical watches also made their movements in-house. But at the end of the 1970s most watch companies changed to quartz drive and scrapped not only mechanical movements, which they regarded as outdated, but also the associated production facilities. At the beginning of the 1980s only a handful of manufactures were left, such as Rolex and Patek Philippe. As great watch company also the ETA still made their proven mechanical calibers, which were sold to other brands.
With the renaissance of mechanical watches (launched by the brands Blancpain and Chronoswiss) the image of the real manufacture won increasingly higher arity, particularly in the area of high-end luxury watches. Many brands reactivated their movement production (for example Zenith, Audemars Piguet, IWC, Jaeger-LeCoultre) or developed new mechanical product lines A. Lange & Söhne, Glashütte Original, Union). Not to mention the brands belonging, together with ETA, to the Swatch Group, such as Omega, Breguet, Longines etc.
Since the turn of the millennium own manufacturing expertise in the field of manufacture calibers belongs to the key features of the major brands of the Haute Horlogerie; as a result more and more brands strive to attain this manufacturing expertise and desire to compete with the top brands (examples Nomos, Frederique Constant, Roger Dubuis, Parmigiani, Chopard, Maurice Lacroix).