After nearly 20 years leading engineering and new product development teams—from defense contractors to consumer goods manufacturers—I’ve seen the same pattern destroy project after project. Engineering departments that should be innovation engines are instead becoming bottlenecks that choke growth.

The harsh reality? Engineers are pricing themselves out of jobs. I recently heard from an industry leader who’s witnessing more manufacturing companies laying off engineers because wage spikes have made large engineering teams financially unsustainable for small to medium manufacturers.

But here’s what the smart leaders are doing differently: They’re treating engineering like any other manufacturing process—and the results are transformative.

The Hidden Wastes Killing Your Product Development

Most engineering leaders focus on hiring more people. The real problem is process waste. The same eight wastes that plague your manufacturing floor exist in your engineering department—they just look different:

(I’ve developed a systematic way to identify these wastes in your specific engineering process—more on that below.)

• Defects in Engineering: Incomplete drawings, missing customer requirements, and rework cycles. If you don’t have time to do it right the first time, you definitely don’t have time to do it twice.

• Extra Features: Engineers love engineering. We’ll add feature after feature until the project scope explodes. Apple didn’t succeed by cramming every cutting-edge technology into the iPhone—they used proven, reliable technology with superior implementation.

• Handoff Disasters: The “throw it over the wall” mentality between engineering, purchasing, and operations. Engineering blames manufacturing for not building to print. Manufacturing blames engineering for wrong prints. Sound familiar?

• Task Switching: Your engineers are constantly interrupted by shop floor emergencies, switching between sustaining work and new product development. Each interruption costs 23 minutes to regain focus.

• Management Delays: Waiting entire quarters for executive sign-offs while projects sit idle. I’ve seen brilliant engineers twiddling their thumbs because all the executives were “out of town” during approval week.

The Toyota Lesson That Changed Everything

When Toyota developed the Sienna minivan, their chief engineers didn’t sit in conference rooms theorizing about American families. They drove minivans across the country and discovered Americans need significantly more cup holders than other markets.

This upfront customer requirement gathering prevented months of redesign cycles. The lesson: Front-load your requirements gathering, or pay for it in rework later.

Four Actions That Immediately Improve Engineering Throughput

1. Document Your Process with Stakeholder Sign-Offs Create a clear new product development process where every stakeholder—purchasing, operations, marketing—signs off at defined milestones. Yes, getting signatures feels bureaucratic, but it eliminates the finger-pointing later.

2. Implement Visual Project Tracking Use a wall Gantt chart (I recommend Ron Mascitelli’s approach from “Mastering Lean Product Development”). Visual management reveals bottlenecks instantly—work piles up where your constraints exist, just like inventory on a factory floor. (This is one of the key diagnostic tools I include in my engineering bottleneck assessment—you can’t fix what you can’t see.)

3. Create True Focus Time Give your engineers four uninterrupted hours weekly. No emails, no meetings, no “quick questions” from the shop floor. You’ll be shocked how much quality work gets done when people can actually think.

4. Bridge the Engineering-Manufacturing Gap Early Include manufacturing in customer requirement discussions from day one. When operations says “just give it to us, we’ll get it done,” they’re setting up a handoff disaster. Everyone needs to understand why decisions were made, not just what to build.

A Real-World Transformation

We recently worked with a 50+ year-old tech company that hadn’t launched a new product in over 20 years. Their engineers were drowning in ECNs (engineering change notices), documentation was impossible to find, and projects never reached completion.

We became their extended engineering resource, taking a full product development project through the first nine months of an 18-month timeline. We handled customer requirements, quality function deployment (QFD), initial design concepts, and project mapping. They took it back in-house for completion with a clear roadmap.

The result: Their first new product launch in two decades, and a repeatable process for future innovation.

The Resource Reality Check

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: You probably can’t afford to hire your way out of engineering bottlenecks. But you can process your way out.

The companies thriving in this constrained environment treat engineering like manufacturing—they identify bottlenecks, eliminate waste, and optimize flow. They’re not trying to do more engineering; they’re doing engineering more efficiently.

(Want to see exactly where your bottlenecks are? I’ve created a simple assessment that maps your specific constraints and prioritizes solutions.)

The engineering teams that survive and thrive will be the ones that prove their value through systematic process improvement, not just technical expertise.

What’s the biggest bottleneck in your engineering process right now? Share your experience in the comments—I read and respond to every one.

Mike Hill is General Manager at Big Rocks Engineering, with over 20 years leading engineering and new product development teams across defense, power electronics, and consumer goods industries. He specializes in helping small to medium OEMs streamline engineering processes and accelerate product development through systematic process improvement.