Design for Excellence goes beyond just manufacturing costs. Consider the entire product lifecycle, including serviceability. A design that's easy to assemble but difficult to service in the field (like using a blind screw on a replaceable part) increases the total cost of ownership and harms the customer experience.

Mixing very large and very small components requires complex and error-prone 'stepped' stencils to apply different amounts of solder paste. By keeping component sizes in a similar range, a simpler, flat stencil can be used, which dramatically improves the reliability and ease of the solder paste printing process.

Placing SMT components too close to through-hole pins obstructs automated selective soldering machines, forcing manufacturers to use slower, more expensive hand soldering or custom fixtures. Enforcing a 3mm keep-out zone around through-hole parts is a simple design rule that ensures compatibility with high-speed automation.

When screw lengths differ by only a few millimeters, assemblers can easily use the wrong one. This may seem to fit correctly but results in insufficient thread engagement, compromising the product's structural integrity, especially under stress like thermal cycling.

For early R&D, don't waste time designing custom components in CAD. Instead, buy existing products, tear them apart, and reuse their mechanisms. A simple tape measure can serve as a constant force spring, saving hours or days of design work and getting to a proof-of-concept faster.

Designers should consider the human operators and machines that will assemble their product. By making choices that simplify manufacturing—providing clear instructions and avoiding known difficulties—the process becomes smoother and more efficient, akin to 'riding a bike downhill.'

To ensure a smooth transition from development to production, an operations or manufacturing SME must be part of the design process from the start. Otherwise, products are developed without manufacturability in mind, leading to expensive, reactive fixes and subjective quality control during scale-up.

The default instinct is to solve problems by adding features and complexity. A more effective design process is to envision an ideal, complex solution and then systematically subtract elements, simplify components, and replace custom parts. This leads to more elegant, robust, and manufacturable products.

Components that hang over a PCB's edge can collide with adjacent boards in a manufacturing panel. Adding a simple dimension on the silkscreen layer to indicate the overhang distance acts as a critical red flag for the manufacturer during the panelization setup, preventing costly rework.