1620, a royal decree established three factories at Jönköping, Söderhamn and Norrtälje (the latter two got their city rights at the same time). 1622 another factory was established and Örebro, and 1624 one at Norrköping under the leadership of Louis de Geer, who was placed as a leader of all factories 1627.

Observe that the term factory of the time does not correspond to today's notion of a factory. It was more of a purchasing and contracting business which hired artisans and craftsmen to produce for them. Repeated attempts were made to get the artisans and craftsmen to move into the cities mentioned above, with limited success. It was not until 1634 that the factories actually had their contracted artisans and craftsmen under the same roof to any larger extent. Note that this is two years after the death of Gustav II Adolf - however, the work he had started was continued under the regency of his daughter Kristina.

1634 was also the year that all factories were placed under a single authority in form of krigskollegiet (the war institute) which started a standardisation and specialisation process.

Rapiers production was chiefly conducted at Vira bruk in Roslagen and completely concentrated there in 1635.

Tools, stirrups, horseshoes, horseshoe nails, breast chains and wagon chains were chiefly made at Jäders bruk at Arboga and concentrated there 1642.

Lavettes, carts, riding equipment, yokes and other draught equipment was made in Stockholm and Jönköping.

1623 there were 2 plate armour smiths, 23 pipe (barrel) smiths and 1 drummaker in the region of Jönköping, and despite a law from 1625 forbidding these to do their trade outside Jönköping, they would still not move to the town.

Cannons were made at Åkers styckebruk, which had been founded 1588, not far from Strängnäs.

Gunpowder was chiefly madew at Åkers krutbruk, founded 1552, which depsite the name was located not far from Forssa a bit away from Åkers styckebruk.

Walloons (French-speaking catholic Dutch - Belgians nowadays) and Dutch were encouraged to immigrate with lucrative monopolies and state subventions to help re-organise the Swedish metal industry and weapon production.

It took more or less the entire 17th century to get craftsmen and artisans to accept working at the factories and standardise production - weapon parts were however still not interchangable in the early 18th century Carolean army. While Gustav II Adolf and the regency that ruled following his death did concentrate, specialise and increase the efficiency of Swedish arms and supplies production (especially cannons, which became a lucrative export product), it was not standardised in the modern sense.

The Swedish armies that ravaged the Holy Roman Empire during the 30 years' war were to a large majority made up of German and to some extent Scottish mercenaries with only a small part of the troops being Swedish and equipped from the Swedish factories.