Studies have shown that 70 – 80% of a product's life cycle costs are committed by the end of the product design phase (Anderson, 2014; National Research Council, 1991; Swift, 1987). This supports the general claim that decision making in the conceptual stage drives the cost throughout the life cycle. The use of concurrent engineering has been viewed as the answer to this problem, offering the Design for Excellence (DFX) as one approach for evaluating product designs across specific disciplines. This research focuses on a subset of DFX referred to as Design for Manufacturability to develop a means to assess manufacturing risk and cost impacts in the conceptual design phase while exploring some of the challenges associated with its implementation. First, the use of design for manufacturing methods typically occurs late in the design phase, where the detection of product deficiencies increases life cycle costs as teams work to mitigate the impacts to cost, quality, and production implementation schedules. Second, implementing methods and tools in the conceptual stage involves the need for decision-making at a point where the least amount of design and manufacturing information is available. Lastly, implementation of new methods requires a commitment of time for personnel to gain the familiarity needed to effectively use these methods to benefit product development activities. In response to this problem, this research introduces the House of Manufacturability (HOM) assessment method, heavily influenced by the House of Quality. This research synthesizes the results of a comprehensive literature review and the insight gained from a stakeholder evaluation involving individuals from the product development community to develop an early life cycle manufacturability assessment. The proposed HOM method utilizes an assessment matrix of manufacturability indicators (MIs) and stakeholder requirements (SRs) to arrive at manufacturability risk numbers (MRNs) that represent the concerns of the manufacturing enterprise. A pilot case study of a notional UAV design concept is explored to illustrate the application of the method and capture observations critical to the research. The results of the case study are compared to the stakeholder input to confirm alignment with the stakeholders’ expectations.