The traditional factors of production are land, labour, capital and entrepreneurship. These factors are considered in product development, and are invested upon by the entrepreneur.
But as technology evolved, it has modified and enhance these factors. The product are easily transported with fast and economic transportation medium, communication between production lines are fast, cheap and of good quality and products are produced in mass.
Strings can be converted to numbers by using the int() and float() methods. If your string does not have decimal places, you'll most likely want to convert it to an integer by using the int() method.