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.

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.

A San Francisco Public Works pilot placed trash cans on every corner and mid-block in a busy neighborhood. Counter-intuitively, this saturation did not significantly decrease litter, revealing that can availability is not the primary driver of public cleanliness; human behavior is.

A harsh reality for hardware startups is that manufacturing and development costs are consistently underestimated. Zipline's founder uses a 10x rule of thumb. They survived by signing a contract at a fixed price, losing money for years while driving costs down through relentless, incremental improvements.

San Francisco's process to select and roll out a new public trash can design will span nearly nine years. This lengthy timeline illustrates how mandated public feedback periods, competitive bidding laws, contracting, and unforeseen crises like COVID can extend the schedule for seemingly simple infrastructure projects far beyond public expectation.

While AI and modern tools are making software development significantly cheaper, government contracting models have not adapted. Agencies remain locked into expensive, outdated procurement processes, paying more for software even as its actual cost plummets.

On public works projects in NYC, union wages are aligned with city and state prevailing wage laws. This means both union and non-union contractors must pay similar rates for public projects, countering the common narrative that high costs are primarily due to a 'union premium.'

San Francisco's Public Works department reveals a paradoxical challenge: for every citizen request to add a trash can, another request often follows to remove it from the same spot. This is because public cans can become magnets for illegal dumping and other nuisances, creating a constant tension between convenience and order.

Building custom components for early-stage prototypes is slow and expensive. A faster, more cost-effective approach is to buy existing commercial products that contain similar components, then scavenge those parts for your prototype. This enables rapid concept validation without investing in custom design and manufacturing.