Many manufacturing problems don’t start on the shop floor. They start much earlier—at the design table. A good design makes production smoother. A poor one creates cost, delay, and rework for years.
Hi, I’m Shrikant Prabhudesai. I work with B2B manufacturing businesses to improve delivery, cost, and execution by aligning design decisions with real shop-floor realities.
At a high level, product and component design should start with clarity, not creativity. The first question isn’t “Can we design this?” but “Can we manufacture this repeatedly, reliably, and at scale?”
Good design balances three things.
First, function—does the product do what the customer actually needs, not everything they asked for?
Second, manufacturability—are tolerances, materials, and processes aligned with your existing machines, skills, and suppliers?
Third, standardization—how many parts can be reused across products instead of creating new ones every time?
Strong designs reduce variation, simplify assembly, and shorten lead times. Weak designs do the opposite—they increase customization, invite errors, and push hidden costs onto the shop floor.
The best-performing manufacturing businesses involve production, quality, and procurement early in the design stage. This prevents surprises later and ensures the design works not just once—but every time.
So if you want better margins and smoother execution, don’t look only at production. Look upstream at design decisions. When products are designed for repeatability and scale, the shop floor naturally becomes faster, cheaper, and more reliable.
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