I do work in product design, and you are correct, as we only use Rhino for small odd jobs in production, and then put those into assemblies in Solidworks/Catia, as those applications not only are made to handle thousands of parts but also have robust PLM/PDM systems.
(Not to derail this thread, but do you use any PDM for Rhino, and if so, how do you handle the embedded files issue?)