This subject is further complicated by the fact that not everyone who actually "builds the thing" is a craftsman.
Craftsmen are generally high-level experts, because they are involved in craft production. Craft production means producing small numbers of highly customised things. One craftsman can often produce the entire thing from primitives. Craft production is not about precise tolerances and interchangeability; craft production is about sanding down this particular component until the fit is perfect for the specific one-off purpose. Did I mention this is very expensive and not reusable at all?
This is in contrast to e.g. mass production where interchangeability and huge volume and a single model ("any colour as long as it's black") rules. The mass production worker isn't drawing on a long and wide experience; they do a job that was designed to be learnt in a few days, and they do it over and over. No feedback cycles are designed into the system. You can make defective parts for hours or days and nobody will notice -- and it's probably best if you keep quiet about it, too. The important thing is that you produce your daily volume, defective or not. Mass production is all about local optimisation at the cost of system performance. But hey, it's cheaper than craft production! (And the output is correspondingly shoddier.)
Then lean production aims for the huge volumes of mass production, except by optimising the entire system instead of local tasks. Books have been written about this so I won't but the end product often costs less than the mass produced, and can also be of higher quality than the craft produced.
I bring this up because as quaint as craftsmen are, if our goal is to be like craft production we'll drive up costs and be outcompeted by someone who realises that craft production isn't all that hot other than for very specific up-scale purposes, where cost is a feature.
Craftsmen are generally high-level experts, because they are involved in craft production. Craft production means producing small numbers of highly customised things. One craftsman can often produce the entire thing from primitives. Craft production is not about precise tolerances and interchangeability; craft production is about sanding down this particular component until the fit is perfect for the specific one-off purpose. Did I mention this is very expensive and not reusable at all?
This is in contrast to e.g. mass production where interchangeability and huge volume and a single model ("any colour as long as it's black") rules. The mass production worker isn't drawing on a long and wide experience; they do a job that was designed to be learnt in a few days, and they do it over and over. No feedback cycles are designed into the system. You can make defective parts for hours or days and nobody will notice -- and it's probably best if you keep quiet about it, too. The important thing is that you produce your daily volume, defective or not. Mass production is all about local optimisation at the cost of system performance. But hey, it's cheaper than craft production! (And the output is correspondingly shoddier.)
Then lean production aims for the huge volumes of mass production, except by optimising the entire system instead of local tasks. Books have been written about this so I won't but the end product often costs less than the mass produced, and can also be of higher quality than the craft produced.
I bring this up because as quaint as craftsmen are, if our goal is to be like craft production we'll drive up costs and be outcompeted by someone who realises that craft production isn't all that hot other than for very specific up-scale purposes, where cost is a feature.