I agree - I think the reason they took it aside and investigated the root cause was that they couldn't afford to produce very many defective parts at £7,000 api

I agree - I think the reason they took it aside and investigated the root cause was that they couldn't afford to produce very many defective parts at £7,000 apiece, whereas in software each defective instance is (nearly) free. That said, I've worked in teams who were developing software that would be boxed, shipped, and installed on millions of remote devices, and I've worked on teams whose main focus was "keep the service running at all costs". The former definitely emphasized root cause analysis, because screw-ups were insanely expensive and difficult to fix once they were shipped. The latter - not so much.