Well when I saw your first part..I had hoped it's about "Long module build chains", a warning webpack emits in the stats.json file. It's been discussed here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32923085/how-to-optimize-webpacks-build-time-using-prefetchplugin-analyse-tool
All in all, after all these years, I haven't come across a good tutorial or article regarding the problem and a solution.
However, I think it's something entirely different, not sure whether it fits your series beside having "long" in the title and being "about imports" :)