How Things Are Made: A Journey Through the Hidden World of Manufacturing

by Tim Minshall

Overview

LONGLISTED AS A FINANCIAL TIMES AND SCHRODERS BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ROYAL SOCIETY TRIVEDI SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE

An illuminating tour through the manufacturing world and its seismic influence on our lives, from internationally renowned expert Tim Minshall

We live in a manufactured world. Unless you are floating naked through space, you are right now in direct contact with multiple manufactured products, including furniture, technology, clothing, and even food. And yet the processes by which these things appear in our lives are virtually invisible. How often do we stop to think: Where do the things we buy actually come from? How are they made, and how do they make their way into our hands?

The answers can be found in How Things Are Made, which traces the surprising paths taken by everyday items to reach consumers, from design to creation to delivery. Innovation expert Tim Minshall takes us on a journey through the manufacturing world, from the smallest job shops to mega-factories, from global shipping hubs to local delivery at your door, revealing the inner workings of the system that runs 24-7-365 to make and deliver the things we need—or want—to live our daily lives, including cars, cakes, phones, planes, drugs, and medical devices. Along the way, he explores how we can improve the fragility of our global manufacturing system and the impact it has on the natural world, presenting a path to a truly sustainable future.

Brimming with energy and lively examples, How Things Are Made maps the awe-inspiring global system of manufacturing that enables virtually every aspect of our existence. By making sense of this surprising and hidden world, we are able to make better choices for ourselves, our communities, and the planet.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063434660
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/12/2026
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Tim Minshall is an engineering academic who works at the University of Cambridge as the inaugural Dr. John C. Taylor Professor of Innovation, head of the Institute for Manufacturing, and Fellow of Churchill College. He is an award-winning professor who researches and writes about manufacturing, innovation, and skills, and regularly delivers talks on these topics nationally and internationally. He also delivers outreach programs to raise awareness of manufacturing among primary and secondary schoolchildren and their teachers. Before becoming an academic, he worked in the UK and Japan as a language teacher, program manager supporting tech start-ups, and freelance writer. 

Editorial Reviews

“In this lively book, Minshall, the head of Cambridge University’s Institute for Manufacturing, assumes the role of an excitable engineer as he illuminates the intricacies of mass production. Alighting on a range of scenarios, from brownie-baking to bicycle assembly, he delineates the web of processes by which commercial goods are produced, including natural-resource management, logistics, and consumer-data gathering.” — New Yorker

“[HOW THINGS ARE MADE] is anything but a dry tome for engineers. [Minshall] writes with a light touch. . . . Readers who have never passed through a factory gate—including high-school and college students thinking about their future careers—are likely to find this book an entertaining introduction to a sector of the economy they know only from the headlines. And those who believe the world is moving toward a postindustrial economy will encounter an energetic argument to the contrary.”
— Wall Street Journal

“An expert and highly enthusiastic tour around the business of making things. Far from a ‘post-industrial’ world, we live in one that is more manufactured than ever before, as Minshall demonstrates in case studies from bakeries to aircraft makers. As well as revealing the inner makings of the world in front of you, the book also looks at the cost of it all in terms of our increasingly vulnerable economic systems and damaged environment.” — Frederick Studemann, Financial Times

“Illuminating. . . . Readers interested in the hidden workings of the world will be well pleased with Minshall’s explorations.”  — Kirkus Reviews

“Entertaining. . . . The complicated hidden backstories of ordinary items fascinate. . . . This will satisfy anyone who’s ever wondered where their favorite products come from.”  — Publishers Weekly

“A timely reminder of the importance of making things and the need to restore the link between maker and consumer...An entertaining and well-observed prescription for how to reverse the hollowing out of global industries.” — Financial Times

“Charming, cheeky, and laugh-out-loud funny are not adjectives commonly applied to a book on manufacturing - but Cambridge professor Tim Minshall somehow achieved all three. Tim's joyous, self-deprecating, and marvelously original book on manufacturing uses stories of quotidian objects like toilet paper to bring the importance of manufacturing to life. How Things Are Made makes a serious subject accessible and fun. If Douglas Adams had decided to write about factories, I suspect it would have sounded a lot like this.” — Dr. Elliott Grant, engineer and entrepreneur, former General Manager of X, Google’s “Moonshot Factory,” and founder of mineral.ai

“How Things Are Made provides clear examples, discussions, and descriptions of the importance of manufacturing, and how, in an effort to optimize it, we have come very close to rendering our supply chains completely dysfunctional. The lessons learned are wonderfully articulated and provide some excellent insights for experts and novices alike. It is a great read, and absolutely entertaining as well.” — Professor Thomas R. Kurfess, Chief Manufacturing Officer, Georgia Institute of Technology

“A fascinating and informative book, telling you all the things you didn't know you wanted to know about manufacturing. And, just as importantly, how you can do your bit to create a more sustainable future for the planet. Whatever your background, you will find eye-opening, entertaining, and enlightening anecdotes to make the world of manufacturing feel real and close to home.” — Professor Dame Athene Donald DBE FRS, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Cambridge

“Reading this book is like being given a personal tour of the world’s factories by a real-life Willy Wonka. Brimming with insight, curiosity and wit, Minshall is a masterful storyteller of the manufactured world; I’ll never look at a brownie in the same way again.” — Dr. Anna Ploszajski, materials scientist, storyteller, and author of Handmade: A Scientist’s Search for Meaning Through Making

From the Publisher

2025-02-01
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.

Kirkus Reviews