Well as a Mechanical Design Engineer (I build military radios) we consider serviceability, but it's usually the after the prototype and first production batch starts to roll.

Before that there is a simple triangle of things we aim for, mind you that only two of the corners can be chosen at once. The three are: On time, within budget and right.

So I'd say that the initial design was right/on time or right/within budget and that "serviceability" was lumped into the "well... we can service it" category of excuses.