The global demand is rising for greener manufacturing processes that are cost-competitive and available in a timely manner. This has led to the development of a series of new tools and integrative platforms enabling rapid engineering of complex phenotypes in industrial microbes. By blending "old classical methods" of strain isolation with "newer approaches" of cell engineering, researchers are demonstrating the ability to stack multiple complex phenotypes in industrial hosts with some level of certainty. Newer tools for dissecting the genotype-phenotype correlation include association analysis (Precision Engineering), multiSCale Analysis of Library Enrichment (SCALE) in competition experiments, whole-genome transcriptional analysis, and proteomics and metabolomics technology. These newer and older tools of metabolic engineering and synthetic biology when combined with recent whole cell engineering approaches like whole genome shuffling, global transciptome machinery engineering, and directed evolutionary engineering, provide a powerful platform for engineering complex phenotypes in industrial strains. This review attempts to highlight and compare these newer tools and approaches with traditional strain isolation procedures as it applies to genome engineering with examples taken from literature.