工厂(gōng chǎng) - factory, works, plant in Mandarin

工厂 (gōng chǎng) is the general word for a factory, and it stretches to cover everything English splits between factory, works and plant. A car factory, a shoe works, a chemical plant: all 工厂, with the product named in front, as in 汽车工厂 and 服装工厂.

It behaves like an ordinary place noun. You go 去工厂, you work 在工厂, and you can say 工厂里 when you mean physically inside the building rather than employed there.

Two things catch English speakers. The second character 厂 is pronounced chǎng and is a full word in compounds such as 电厂 (power station) and 厂长 (factory manager), but it almost never stands alone in speech. And do not stretch 工厂 to the company that owns it: the business is 公司, the site where things get made is 工厂, and a firm can own several.