It Really Isn't a Tradeoff
For a long time it was a commonly accepted belief that cost, quality and time were opposing choices. The belief was that they traded off against each other because good quality took lots of time, speed increased cost, and costs had to be higher if you wanted the quality right.
Strangely enough these beliefs were surviving folklore from the craftsman era. For example, back then the belief was that creating a handmade leather saddle took extra time and cost extra money in order to possess the high quality expected of a custom saddle. In that world this is still true.
Most of us don’t live in the one-off world anymore. Most products we buy and services we use are provided en masse. Even if they are customized to our needs, as a Starbucks cup of coffee is, most products and services are still mass produced.
