HOW THINGS ARE MADE

Diving into manufacturing and the modern supply chain.

“Throughout every day of your life you will be wearing, consuming, being transported or sheltered by, communicating through or being restored to health by manufactured products,” writes Cambridge University scholar Minshall. Yet, he adds, how these products come into being is “largely invisible” to most consumers. Minshall aims to make at least some of the processes visible, and he uses everyday objects to illustrate their complexities. One is toilet paper, which, at a basic level, requires different kinds of wood pulped and then glued together and cut onto rolls at the rate of 14,000 rolls an hour, then serviced by an army of haulers, shippers, clerks, data analysts, and logistics specialists until it arrives on the shelf: “The whole system to make this product requires the brains and brawn of thousands of workers, millions of dollars of investment and the movement of materials and partly finished goods over thousands of miles.” That this product is so essential, Minshall adds in passing, explains the perfectly rational hoarding of toilet paper that occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic, which in turn exposed the many snags inherent in the supply chain, another subject on which he sheds useful light. Move from toilet paper to a more complex product, and the obstacles multiply by orders of magnitude; who knew how many countries were involved in the production of an Airbus-320 plane, all of whose parts—ideally—are perfectly made and assembled? Moving wings from Wales, landing gear from Canada, horizontal tailplanes from Spain, and so forth to the central assembly plant in France involves a massive carbon footprint, and Minshall concludes his illuminating study with how manufacturing might be more efficient and environmentally friendly, in part by keeping at least some of it as local as possible.

Readers interested in the hidden workings of the world will be well pleased with Minshall’s explorations.