A productive manufacturing engineering sector comes from making the best use of our manufacturing processes – understanding and utilising their technological capabilities and the economic opportunities they can offer. If we can get the quality and cost of our products right for our customers, then our businesses will reap the financial rewards. It is often thought that selecting manufacturing processes for making our products is the responsibility of the production people. In reality, this can be highly influenced by design – the processes used can be largely predetermined by the design alternative selected: choice of materials, sizes, shapes, finishes and tolerances, etc. Therefore, process options should feature at the concept selection stage. There are always design alternatives, with some being more economic and robust than others. All other things being equal, the design professional should select the most competitive design in terms of quality and cost while ensuring that the functional requirements of the design are met.