Manager: the new manufacturing process should save us time overall, ev

Manager: the new manufacturing process should save us time overall, even though the first step of the five-step process will take twice as long as it does under the old process.
Under the new process, far fewer of the components will be found defective,
the sole purpose of steps two and three under the old process is to weed out defective components.
fewer defects doesn't mean no defects. and these effects should be handled somewhere in the process.
only B addresses this issue.

Let's question statement B. If yes then steps 2 and 3 are required.
If no then steps 2 and 3 are not required.

Answer: B

IMO answer is 'B' for below reasons.

I am concerned about saving time by following new process and hence looking for an option that helps answering this concern.

(A) Whether factory workers will require training in order to use the new manufacturing process. It does not answer that new process will save time or not.

(B) Whether the new process is likely to introduce deficiencies or imperfections that must be corrected. If the new process introduces deficiencies that need to be corrected, then there is no point adopting the same. It might will take more time doing the corrections.

(C) Whether defective components can be fixed or must be thrown out. We are concerned about speed of the process and not about the defective components usage.

(D) Whether a third manufacturing process would save even more time than both the old and new manufacturing processes. We are concerned about only two processes mentioned in the passage.

(E) Whether saving time with the new manufacturing process will ultimately lead to cost savings for the company. We want time savings and not cost savings.

Hope I chose the right option
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Hi Wonderwoman31

The Conclusion of the Argument is As a result, we should be able to eliminate two of the five steps in the existing manufacturing process.

Option B states that Whether the new process is likely to introduce deficiencies or imperfections that must be corrected ?

If the Answer of this question is Yes, then the conclusion is weakened(we may be not be able to eliminate both the steps) and if it is no, the conclusion is strengthened that we can eliminate two of the five steps absolutely.

C on the other hand talks about defective components can be fixed or must be thrown out, which is out of scope for this Argument.

Hope this helps!

Is C out of scope? I think it only weakens.

IMO, evaluate choice as rightly mentioned based on a yes or no should strengthen and weaken for us to be able to evaluate.
However, acc to C defective components exist - whether it must be fixed or thrown out is a different ball game - Existing alone weakens the arg that says 2 and 3 are eliminated because it avoids the defective weeding out steps. Agree?

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I eliminated A, C, and D pretty easily on the grounds that they were OOS or were not related closely to the argument.

Choosing between B and E was tough, but I eliminated E because it is about cost savings for the company. Obviously in any business cost savings is extremely important, but I decided that was not what we were talking about here. We have an argument about saving time, which is equally as important as $$$.

Answer: B

A. Whether factory workers will requirement training in order to use the new manufacturing process
Maybe or maybe not. If they did but only a little bit, it wouldnt effect us etc. OOS.


B. Whether the new process is likely to introduce deficiencies or imperfections that must be corrected
If this is "must be" and that case happens, our new idea will fail us. keep it.

C. Whether defective components can be fixed or must be thrown out
We dont care. OOS.

D. Whether a third manufacturing process would save even more time than both the old and new manufacturing processes
We are talking about this one. OOS.

E. Whether saving time with the new manufacturing process will ultimately lead to cost savings for the company.
We dont care about money anywhere.

Answer B

This question is not tagged correctly to assumption type question. Must be tagged to Evaluate type question.

That's an easy peasy
Premise- New manufacturing removes the need of 2nd and 3rd step, which were used for removing defective items, in old process
Conclusion- New manufacturing process saves time
Missing Info/Assumption- New manufacturing process does not introduce any more defectives in the process

The only plausible question to evaluate this is "Whether the new process is likely to introduce deficiencies or imperfections that must be corrected" as this is a make or break question to the premise.
Option B is the answer
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I chose B by POE. However, the paragraph states that far fewer components will be defective (nonetheless there will be defective components) so it makes no sense to cancel out the steps that weed out imperfections.
gmat1393 help

I have a problem understanding the last sentence of this exercise "As a result, we should be able to eliminate two of the five steps in the existing manufacturing process". Who tells me that the two steps to be eliminated are steps two and three and not four and five?

Hi,

As the argument states that "the sole purpose of steps two and three under the old process is to weed out defective components" and that under the new process "far fewer of the components will be found defective", therefore, steps two and three will be redundant because their entire purpose was to look for defects which won't be present in the new process. This is why it says that steps two and three should be eliminated.

Hope it helps!

What I find confusing with this question is it seems like the the answer B-"Whether the new process is likely to introduce deficiencies or imperfections that must be corrected" was already addressed in as a premise "Under the new process, far fewer of the components will be found defective".

So how will evaluating B bring us to question the process if they've already stated that fewer components will be found defective?

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