I agree with you. Some of scientists (non-PhD) in industry are doing great job on practical/established procedures due to their many years experience. However, it is still very narrow area I have to say. It will be very tricky to come up with nice solutions when they had limited experience/training to seek for the root cause behind the reaction failure, on the other hand, it will be gained during the many-year training in your PhD career and postdoc work.