Yo: Definitely agree with you on the factory visits. I worked on assembly lines for a couple weeks at an old job. The more that a designer works at different functions in a company illuminates all the things that we touch. A real person has to assemble that product. Someone else has to stock it. Another has to keep inventory for it. Someone else is going to stick it in an envelope and send it to a customer to replace a broken one. Yet another is going to have an hour long conversation trying to figure out which part the customer needs.
I wish every CEO or president worked a week at these positions too…