Comment by greedo

Improvement is usually done via competition. Sometimes the competition is price based, and sometimes quality based. In the best of worlds, both.

For example, there are a ton of cheap crappy woodworking tools. Think Stanley etc. They barely do the job if at all. Then there are a group of vendors like Wood River that constantly create newer tools that are much more expensive than what you find in a big box tool store. And then farther up the food chain are vendors like Lie Nielsen who craft luxury tools that are amazing to use.

This market segmentation extends to most tools; someone like Woodpecker comes up with a ton of clever tools for marking/measuring etc for woodworking, then others copy them. Oldest story in capitalism.

The manufacturing improvements in this process are non-stop. For some really good examples in consumer electronics, read "Apple in China" to see how China transformed into a power house in a relatively short amount of time.