Some part of the process -- anywhere from specs to assembly-- had some cost cutting that led to the outcome. The root cause of this problem is something financially motivated.
While I don’t disagree with you that it is possible, it isn’t a very “engineering” approach to declare that is the case without doing a root cause analysis. Stating it as fact is as bad as the MBAs…
Cost cutting could have been a factor. Or the root cause might have been something entirely different.
It's quite possible to choose to spend more money on a process or method you believe is higher quality, but still discover it has some specific problem that the previous cheaper version didn't.