One of the key benefits of using a contract manufacturer for both design and manufacturing is the ability to work with a product design team that is experienced with manufacturing. This can eliminate design errors that could otherwise increase tooling costs and secondary processing costs. However, this option can also result in a design team that limits design choices to in-house production processes. The optimum solution is choosing a contract manufacturer with a broad enough range of capabilities that all design options that would make sense for the product are considered. This whitepaper looks at two examples where optimum solutions incorporated multiple types of manufacturing processes or overcame production-related constraints that have traditionally limited design options.