Okay, I have to be doing something wrong. How the hell do you increase refitting/construction in shipyards besides research? By the time my shipyard is done refitting for my first warship I'll already have the tech to design a much more advanced warship. Oh and it's a 60k shipyard with 1 slipway and the ship in question is around 30 tons.
Get more shipyards, dedicate a few for the classes you'll build the most (Cargo ship, basic warship, etc.), and of course, using the outdated tech ship. You don't need to upgrade as soon as possible.
Also, you can build other ship classes in a shipyard, if the class is extremely similar to the one the shipyard is fitted to.
I understand that, my question being is once I decide to refit the speed is atrociously slow. I want to know how to increase that, not avoid it totally.
Also, what you're refitting plays a big part. Refitting small components like electronics and weapons is fairly quick and cheap (and often can be done without having to retool the shipyard). Refitting things that cause major structural changes (engines, jumpdrives, drastically changing hullsize) take a lot longer and typically require retooling. Retooling takes a LONG time and should be avoided where possible. If it's for a small ship, it might be cheaper and faster to just build a new shipyard, especially if it's for a limited-use ship.
I typically expand my freighter and colony yards to 5 slipways each, so I can build whole transport squadrons at one time. Warships, I'll expand to whatever my squadron composition dictates. For example, if I have a tactical unit of one jump-capable cruiser and four non-jump missile destroyers, I'll leave the cruiser yard at 1 slipway, and expand the destroyer yard to four, so that I can build a new squadron whole-cloth.
Bear in mind that the more slipways a yard has, the longer it takes to retool.
You're pretty much always going to be building ships that will be in part obsolete by the time they leave their moorings. That's actually realistic.