Lol,I like your caption 5, Yes there is no better way than practical experience, reminds me of two problems I was involved in, the first was rice, our new factory director (supposedly an engineer), asked me to look into a rice cooking process with him, the company was going through a crisis, there was a need to save money, rice is a difficult one originally, rice was cooked in vessels with agitators, the process required the rice & water (plus some other ingredients like oil or saffron depending on the type), the idea was to increase the yield by adding more water, this posed a problem as softer rice caused problems in metering into the trays at packing so we had a chicken & egg situation, occassionally, the customers would prefer a softer texture to an al-dente, getting the yied up would eleviate this, increase profit but caused major problems on final packaging weight. his brief to me was get the water ratio up, both the operators who were chosen due to their expertise on rice & myself argued the facts but we were told in no uncertain terms this is what he wanted, fine I calibrated the system, then came the problems, I discussed this with the team & we came up with the idea of going back to the original rice recipe & adding a metered spray of water to the final pack, this would be absorbed into the rice & when re-heated give the required texture & yield, worked well.
The other was a sauce, again we had an on-line meeting with the plant manufacturers, our CEO, Product development & production, particular sauces required cream, this is notoriuos in causing splitting especially when cooled to below 4 degrees, leaving splitting of the components & a grainy texture with oil bubbles, when re-heated it would dissapear, however, probably did not look appitising to the consumer on the shelf, this had been a major problem for years, I sat in this meeting, all sorts of ideas (most had been tried before) were thown onto the table, I'm no expert in food science but have worked with many product development engineers, I popped the question why not reduce the heat before adding the cream, use a system called Cook time (this is based on the science that you can destroy the spoilers (bugs) at a lower temperture over time), It was commonly used in cooking of meat in hot water over periods of 10 hours or more, the cook time would vary depending on the core temperature, this ensured the required parameters had been met, there was silence in the meeting, I was asked how I knew about this, I simply replied, when my mum cooked with cream I remembered she would tell me that too much heat would cause splitting.
It was trialed, improved the product (Note: there are other factors that will also cause splitting like cooling too fast, cooling too slowly etc.).
It always reminded me of a tale (no idea if it actualy happened) A bus got wedged under a low bridge, firemen, local council engineers spent time discussing things like cutting the roof off etc., a young boy piped up hey mister, why don't you let the tyres down. (yes I'm British so it has a "Y").
Sorry it's a bit long winded, but while technical ability is a must there is also experience.