> You need this many people to make this many things and your things sell for this much. Speaking with no manufacturing experience, but having read some books

> You need this many people to make this many things and your things sell for this much. Speaking with no manufacturing experience, but having read some books (Diamandis' Abundance). You can reduce long-term costs by automating. If each week you buy a robot replacing a human, your operational costs go down permanently. That is because robots are fundamentally cheaper than human time. Of course, you have to foresee the demand that would make it possible to recoup the costs.