Pure anecdotal evidence here , but I worked in a aviation manufacturing for a summer plus a master ' s in space studies . The education taught me that the design process should essentially minimize risk and allocate plenty of time for the quality assurance process . From the actual shop floor experience I ' ll tell you it ' s completely different . At every level there ' s pressure to meet deadlines . Add on to that , there ' s only so much an engineer can do to make a part easy to manufacture . Some parts , they ' re nearly impossible to get right I ' m thinking of one part in particular . The other caveat i would add is that I worked on an experimental aircraft . For something in a production environment , like the Soyuz or the Atlas V , those risks may be reduced through iteration .