I always thought he best design breaks within a week after the warranty is up. That's perfection.
The stuff I built or fixed for a research lab, I used the "reusable", "recyclable", "repairable", "modular/reconfigurable" and "I don't want to see it again". Unfortunately, during my tenure not much became "recyclable" or the ability to re-use it's [arts to make something else. "Re-configurable" seemed to be the norm. Stuff I built was still being used 25 years later.
I absolutely loved building controls with DIN rail stuff.
Some stuff that didn't use my philosophy, I "refused to fix" or pulled the "It has to conform" to this before I will deal with it.
The idiots in one case designed a shutdown controller similar to mine. It's features:
1) Sequential alarms. You have no idea what tripped the alarm or if there were two.
2) If the alarm momentarily tripped, you had no idea what alarm did it. The alarms didn't latch.
3) Instead of building it into a wall cabinet, they built it into a rack. Nearly 98% of the sensors were building related.
(shutdown buttons, air velocity, fire alarm, etc.)
4) Connected via screw terminals so it it was nearly impossible to remove and troubleshoot.
(I would have at least went with slides)
5) No readout on air velocity and no latching meant you never knew when to clean the sensor.
Eventually, I managed to run all of the building stuff into a big box and connect the rack via a large CPC connector.
Now at least it could be removed and reconnected with a few inter-connects to the second rack case.
And I got power run to that interconnect box, to run the air velocity alarm. The box needed an indicator during an upgrade for some reason, but i forget what it was for.
On the systems I designed, I would not allow a light bulb to be powered from a supply in another room. It had first go to the termination bock and then to a relay that used the box's power to power the indicator. That way, I was not likely to shut down a remote system accidentally when troubleshooting.