I know all that and have been the business of making stuff for decades. In retirement I still am but on a much smaller scale.
You misunderstand the most important part of the process.... getting paid. You can make all kinds of stuff but if you can’t sell it and then most importantly, get paid, making is for naught.
Rather than create wealth, you have lost it.
I would recommend you to visit local craft show where makers and artists have stuff they have made for sale. It is a small but illustrative market. Some vendors are selling stuff very well. others are not and have lots of unsold and unsalable inventory. The point is regardless of the size of the enterprise, you can make stuff but the business will fail if the stuff can’t be sold.
Many many formerly prosperous companies found they could make stuff but couldn’t sell it...... too expansive, not competitive.
My retirement job involves visiting companies both very large and very small that make and sell stuff to export customers. They make it and get paid.
I also visit on behalf of clients abroad, dead companies that are selling their still usable equipment and machines to buyers overseas. The Americans could make stuff but couldn’t sell it or get paid so they ceased operations. The foreigners are buying the machinery to have a crack at making the stuff on a different cost basis. I visit the dead factories and be sure the bones being sold are the bones being bought. It is depressing to see
The task for America, that is BTW well underway, is to create new stuff to be sold. We are not going to ever resume making the old stuff. We are after all America, and creating and making is what we do.
Or more correctly making stuff other people would like to have. The more (good) stuff you make the more wealth you have created.
Yes you have to make stuff that other people will pay for.