Pain in the butt to give new orders after each ship is built.
End of quote
I suggest that you figure out what ships you want the most of, and have some of you planets build them non-stop. I don't bother to build more than a handful of different types of ships at any given time. If I design something new, its ussually to be a better version of another design.
I tend to mass produce medium hulls on most of my worlds, while I leave my other planets with the task of building some troop transports and constructors. I also tend to make some of my worlds to be factory worlds. With lots of factories, and a power plant, I can ussually build my best ships in the fraction of the time it would take to build them on other worlds.