In my experience, most operators wouldn't have mentioned it. The first thing I'll do is interview them about any problem I'm investigating, and while they are m

In my experience, most operators wouldn't have mentioned it. The first thing I'll do is interview them about any problem I'm investigating, and while they are masters of hindsight, they'll not always be masters of foresight. My coworkers and I have spent a lot of time talking about this sort of thing, and we're often flabbergasted that they don't point out these obvious things sooner. As in, your typical person just gets used to broken things, or they just never think about it. Literally, they'll never think "there's got to be a better way". But the operators who do have that foresight, they are just living gold (though not quite as rare). Mind, I've had my share of "why not get a 100 foot tape measure" instead of attempting to use laser measurements, but they're in the minority. I emphasize them in practice because people need to feel like they're smart enough to see the simple solutions (because they _are_), but often I have to work to merge their solutions into something workable. TL;DR: operators should be consulted first, last, and during the development. But engineering is still hard to keep simple.