I find it very hard to believe: as soon as he mentioned removing small empty boxes the idea of a fan leapt to mind; I really can't imagine that none of the team already operating the factory thought of this solution.
Wind meter on the other side of the conveyer belt and an air horn whenever it drops below a certain level...
I'd have thought a couple of fans checked once a day would provide less failures than are significant.
This doesn't seem like a reason not to propose the system, the alternate proposed solution would have similar failure modes too.