Faster, Better, Cheaper in the History of Manufacturing

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1. leobgOct 2025
   Not an exact match, but I liked this one a lot (read it twice):

   "Faster, Better, Cheaper" in the History of Manufacturing: From the Stone Age to Lean Manufacturing and Beyond by Christoph Roser

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2. AlexMuirApr 2024
   Great question! A lot of absolute shite in the comments here. If you dream about building a factory then here's my thoughts:

   Read

   - Read "Faster, Better, Cheaper in the History of Manufacturing" by Christoph Roser - it's an expensive book but gives a great overview of how we got to where we are in manufacturing. From stone tools through bronze casting, Venetian shipbuilders, Josiah Wedgwood, the Portsmouth Block Mill [0] and so on.

   - Simon Winchester's "Precision" is a great book too - more concentrated on the emergence of machine tools which will be your BREAD AND BUTTER in a factory.

   Steam engines are irrelevant to you but the tools they drove - the lathe, shaper, milling machine are still pretty much exactly the same. Big difference is instead of a man operating them they are CNC.

   To know how to make stuff, you need to be able to look at anything and have a rough idea how it's made. What materials, what processes, and then you can figure out why it's done that way. You won't find a piece of solid wood wider than about 3" at Ikea. Why? Because wider wood is massively more expensive than narrow wood.

   - Materials: metals, plastics. Wood and glass are a bit niche really.

   - Essential machines: the bandsaw, angle grinder, drill press, the lathe, milling machine, angle grinder, tube bender, sheet metal brake.

   - Joining metal: Welding, riveting, rivnuts, taps and dies.

   - Casting and foundry work, blacksmithing (surprisingly accessible)

   I'd say woodworking is a terrible entry into manufacturing. I went that way because it's useful for renovations. But working the wood is a craft, and I wish I'd started with fabrication and machining.

   Likewise, very little is 3D printed at scale. It's great for prototyping and looking at things - that's about it. People will argue, but go to any big-box retailer and try to find something that's been 3D printed...

   Electronics: You can now build a massive amount of useful consumer electronics without needing to design PCBs. I've built central heating thermostats, wifi-controlled extractor fans, infrared break beams etc. ESP32, ESP8266 platforms are great for playing with. ESPHome is software that makes programming these devices really easy: here's an example of what you can make https://esphome.io/guides/diy - they have a list of devices they support, that's basically a list of industry standard electronics building blocks for you: https://esphome.io/index.html#sensor-components . You'll quickly realise that a lot of electronics is just the same stuff.

   I'm out of time so I'm just going to throw references your way:

   - Fireball Tool: Successfully set up a factory https://www.youtube.com/c/FireballTool

   - AVE Boltr: Tears down tools and products with good insight into materials https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY7XO5H_6HY

   - Brits get rich in China - a classic following three entrepreneurs trying to setup factories in China https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKP40gLmVMY

   [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portsmouth_Block_Mills

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3. leobgSep 2022
   Christoph Roser in "Faster, better, cheaper in the history of manufacturing from the Stone Age to lean manufacturing and beyond", about England switching from the 15h workday to an 8h workday back in the 19th century:

   > As is to be expected, working fewer hours per day improved productivity per hour. However, what totally surprised employ­ers was that in many cases, the employees were able to produce more in eight hours than before in 14 or 16 hours, not in relative comparison but in absolute numbers! A worker, in eight hours of work with 16 hours of break in between, produced more per day than the same worker did before in 14 to 16 hours with only an eight-hour break in between.

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