Did you know that in the mechanical world a huge cost driver is the concentricity specification? It’s true most don’t realize but it can change the cost of your part by a factor of 60% plus. There are few who truly even have the equipment to measure it so ask your mechanical engineers if total runout or runout will be sufficient. Our guess is yes and the price is way less.
Did you know that when designing a PCBA there are a couple cost drivers. Some of the biggees are via fill. Do you really need it and especially at the R&D phase? It’s about 40-70% more and about 30 days longer just to get the raw cards. Did you know that not having reference designators and clear polarity markers on your silkscreen will increase the programming and setup time by a factor of 4-5x. Often we find these things can be negotiated and especially during a time when your cost to market something or fail fast is CRITICAL.
There are many more but these are today’s tidbits for our local manufacturers that design product(s).