To accurately reduce cost of goods sold (COGS), analyze total cost, including assembly labor, not just individual component prices. A more expensive prefabricated part, like a $1,500 wiring harness, can slash total costs by eliminating $6,000 worth of manual labor time, but requires looking beyond departmental budgets.

Build products on simple, foundational concepts rather than complex, rigid features. These core building blocks can then be combined and layered, leading to emergent complexity that allows the product to scale and serve diverse needs without being overwhelming by default.

True AI design optimization is a multi-objective problem that must include manufacturing constraints from the outset. Rather than creating theoretically perfect but unbuildable parts, effective systems embed rules for processes like stamping, ensuring every generated design is viable for production.

Expanding SKU variants to satisfy every individual customer preference creates logistical drag and operational complexity. Nick Green advises early-stage brands to define quality by scalability. By maintaining an ultra-curated catalog and focusing on hero products rather than attempting to provide every cut, length, or option, a brand can preserve high standards, streamline production, and scale efficiently.

Instead of designing common components from scratch, experienced engineers download free 3D CAD models from suppliers like McMaster-Carr. They then modify these files—for example, cutting off unneeded parts of a screw model and adding custom features—to create a new component, saving significant design time.

Simple design is fast and cheap, and it starts with minimal requirements. By aggressively questioning every single requirement, even those that seem obvious, engineering teams can often delete constraints or find opportunities to reuse existing solutions, radically simplifying the design and accelerating the production timeline.

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.

Zipline's 50% cost reduction for its next-gen aircraft wasn't just from supply chain optimization. The primary driver was a design philosophy focused on eliminating components entirely ("the best part is no part"), which also improves reliability.

Manufacturing excellence is predetermined by how easily a product can be assembled. The product and its manufacturing line must be designed in parallel. If you wait to consider manufacturing until after the design is complete, you will have engineered in inefficiencies that are costly or impossible to fix.