The Process
All files are copied from an "Input Folder" into an "Output Folder", with one important change. HTML pages are melded and minified. Melding involves loading external images, style sheets, and scripts, and embedding them in the page itself. Minification involves eliminating unnecessary parts of the HTML and CSS to make the page as small as possible. This process does not change the appearance or function of the website.
Your web designers will continue to work in the Input Folder as normal, on unmelded code, only creating a melded copy once right before committing changes to the web server.