The road to achieving operating excellence for any production system is always littered with numerous challenges. Many of these challenges are identified during the design and development phase of product realization and are confronted with problem solving efforts. The investigation during the problem solving inherently results in predictors that can be linked to the design problems faced during production in hindsight. By understanding these predictors and utilizing them to your advantage the designer can minimize the impact to downstream product. Several case studies will be presented that demonstrate the complexity yet reward of these predictors and having the ability to recognize proactively the learning opportunities of production.