Manufacturing technicians and engineers favor product teardowns, the

Question

Manufacturing technicians and engineers favor product teardowns, the time-honored practice of dismantling products—their own firm's and its competitors'—to spark fresh thinking. Yet few manufacturers get the full value that teardowns afford. Many senior executives discourage the practice, and by viewing teardowns as unsupervised exercises for engineers or cost-cutting tactics for the purchasing department, they retard creativity and leave the ideas generated in teardowns unexplored.

Not so for a medical products company that used teardowns to improve its electronic medical device. To foster new ideas, the company's senior executives invited employees from the purchasing, marketing, engineering, and sales departments to compare their product to rival products. Seeing the products together allowed the purchasing department to quickly identify simple design changes that, while invisible to customers, significantly lowered manufacturing costs.

Additionally, seeing the configurations of competitors' electronic circuit boards spurred the team to discuss the manufacturing implications of the company's modular approach to design. The engineers had long assumed that letting customers, when purchasing, select various options was advantageous and had emphasized this in the product's design. Yet  the salespeople reported that customers rarely took advantage of the capability . The conversations ultimately led to simplifications in the product's circuitry, significantly lowering costs, and also helped marketers identify a new customer segment where the product might command a higher price.   1 
 1. The information in the passage provides the most support for which of the following statements about what the salespeople reported having observed in relation to customer behavior ( see highlighted text )?

A. The senior executives of the medical products company had previously been aware of what the salespeople reported having observed.
B. The salespeople, in reporting their observations, were focused primarily on generating new customer segments for the marketers.
C. The salespeople's observations called into question one of the engineers' assumptions about the design of the company's device.
D. The salespeople were themselves surprised by what they had observed.
E. In reporting as they did, the salespeople did not intend to advocate changes in the design of the company's device.

2 
 2. Which of the following actions does the passage most strongly suggest helped the medical products company lower the cost of manufacturing its electronic device?

A. Adding novel high-performance features to the product
B. Using the same electronic circuit board designs as its competitors
C. Ensuring that changes to the device were invisible to customers
D. Redirecting its marketing strategies
E. Scaling back the options given to customers

3 
 3. Based on the passage, it is most likely that the senior executives of the medical products company mentioned in the second paragraph

A. believed prior to implementing teardowns that the electronic circuitry of their device needed to be simplified
B. were unaware of the engineers' modular approach to the design of their device
C. had little experience with the successful implementation of teardowns
D. did not believe teardowns were bound to be unsupervised exercises for engineers or cost-cutting tactics by the purchasing department
E. were motivated to implement teardowns primarily by customer feedback

amolb29 · Answer

Q2 seems doubtful, can anyone explain?

Shan2022 · Answer

Ans to Ques2: The customers were given various options to select from. However,they rarely took the advantage of this capability, enabling the company to simplify the products by scaling down the options which in turn led to the reduction in production costs.

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Sajjad1994 · Answer

Explanation

2. Which of the following actions does the passage most strongly suggest helped the medical products company lower the cost of manufacturing its electronic device?

Explanation

The passage most strongly suggests that scaling back the options given to customers helped the medical products company lower the cost of manufacturing its electronic device. Therefore, the correct answer is  (E) .

According to the passage, the engineers at the medical products company had assumed that offering customers various options in the product's design was advantageous. However, the salespeople reported that customers rarely took advantage of this capability. This information came to light during the discussions sparked by the product teardowns, where the configurations of competitors' electronic circuit boards were observed.

As a result of these conversations, the team identified the need to simplify the product's circuitry. By scaling back the options given to customers and streamlining the design, the company was able to significantly lower manufacturing costs. This indicates that reducing the complexity and customization options of the device played a crucial role in cost reduction.

The passage highlights how the product teardowns facilitated cross-departmental discussions and allowed different perspectives to converge. This ultimately led to the realization that the previous emphasis on offering multiple options to customers was unnecessary and costly. By simplifying the product's circuitry and scaling back the options, the company was able to optimize manufacturing costs without compromising the overall functionality or performance of the device.

Therefore, the passage strongly suggests that  E . scaling back the options given to customers was the action that helped the medical products company lower the cost of manufacturing its electronic device.

Answer: E

karnavora1 · Answer

1. The information in the passage provides the most support for which of the following statements about what the salespeople reported having observed in relation to customer behavior (see highlighted text)?

A. The senior executives of the medical products company had previously been aware of what the salespeople reported having observed.
B. The salespeople, in reporting their observations, were focused primarily on generating new customer segments for the marketers. 
 C. The salespeople's observations called into question one of the engineers' assumptions about the design of the company's device. 
This is the correct answer because as mentioned in the 3rd Paragraph the modular design was not as advantageous as assumed
 D. The salespeople were themselves surprised by what they had observed.
E. In reporting as they did, the salespeople did not intend to advocate changes in the design of the company's device.

2. Which of the following actions does the passage most strongly suggest helped the medical products company lower the cost of manufacturing its electronic device?

A. Adding novel high-performance features to the product
B. Using the same electronic circuit board designs as its competitors
C. Ensuring that changes to the device were invisible to customers
D. Redirecting its marketing strategies 
 E. Scaling back the options given to customers 
The modular design let customers select various options however after simplifying the design this option was taken away.

3. Based on the passage, it is most likely that the senior executives of the medical products company mentioned in the second paragraph

A. believed prior to implementing teardowns that the electronic circuitry of their device needed to be simplified
B. were unaware of the engineers' modular approach to the design of their device
C. had little experience with the successful implementation of teardowns 
 D. did not believe teardowns were bound to be unsupervised exercises for engineers or cost-cutting tactics by the purchasing department 
The senior executives called engineers and people from the purchase department to foster new ideas.
 E. were motivated to implement teardowns primarily by customer feedback

mbaaspirantss07 · Answer

Can someone explain the answer to Q3?

Sajjad1994 · Answer

Explanation

3. Based on the passage, it is most likely that the senior executives of the medical products company mentioned in the second paragraph

Difficulty Level:   650

Explanation

A.  There is no evidence in the passage to suggest that the senior executives believed this prior to implementing teardowns. The passage mentions that the engineers assumed a modular approach was advantageous, and the simplification of the product's circuitry resulted from discussions during the teardowns.

B.  There is no indication in the passage that the senior executives were unaware of the engineers' modular approach. The passage mentions that discussions during teardowns led to engineers reevaluating their assumptions and making changes to the product's design.

C.  The passage doesn't provide information about the senior executives' prior experience with teardowns. It focuses on the fact that many senior executives in manufacturing tend to discourage teardowns, but it doesn't explicitly mention the experience of the senior executives in the medical products company.

D.  This is the correct answer. The passage mentions that many senior executives discourage teardowns by viewing them as unsupervised exercises for engineers or cost-cutting tactics for the purchasing department. However, the senior executives of the medical products company did not share this view; instead, they invited employees from various departments to participate in teardowns.

E.  There is no information in the passage to suggest that the motivation for implementing teardowns was primarily driven by customer feedback. The passage emphasizes the inclusive approach of involving employees from various departments to compare products and generate ideas for improvement.

Answer: D

GandhiSiddhant · Answer

My approach to solve 2
Please feel free to correct if need be

2. Which of the following actions does the passage most strongly suggest helped the medical products company lower the cost of manufacturing its electronic device?

A. Adding novel high-performance features to the product
=> not done, not mentioned, doesnt lower cost, eliminated
B. Using the same electronic circuit board designs as its competitors
=> not mentioned in the paragraph about modifying to competitors devices, therefore not strictly true eliminated
C. Ensuring that changes to the device were invisible to customers
=> (this is what i selected in my actual mock.) Purchasing team identified changes that would be invisible to customer but lower manufacturing cost. Making these changes reduced the costs. Ensuring the changes were invisible in itself didnt reduce costs. Or to eliminate this option we could argue, that if those changes were made and no effort was taken to ensure they would be invisible to the customer, we would still succeed in lowering costs. wrong
D. Redirecting its marketing strategies
=> Not talked about eliminate
E. Scaling back the options given to customers
=> this helped simplify board design. Therefore helped lower the manufacturing costs. Like in option C we cant argue that scaling back initself didnt reduce costs, but simplifying of the circuit board did. As the process of simplification of the board was equal to scaling back the customer option. Therefore correct.

FCK89 · Answer

Hi please can someone correct me if I'm wrong. I got it wrong at the beginning but finally I understood my errors.

2. Which of the  following actions  does the passage  most strongly  suggest  helped the medical products company lower the cost of manufacturing its electronic device ?

A. Adding novel high-performance features to the product
Nowhere in the passage the author talk about it, so we can eliminate this option.

B. Using the same electronic circuit board designs as its competitors
Same as option A

C. Ensuring that  changes to the device were invisible to customers 
"Seeing the products together  allowed the purchasing department to quickly identify simple design changes that,  while invisible to customers,  significantly lowered manufacturing costs .
I'm not sure that changes to the device were invisible to customers was the strongest actions leading to reduction of cost. According to the passage, it's the identification of the design which led to lower the manufacturing costs.

D. Redirecting its marketing strategies
At the beginning I thought it's was the answer because of this part of the passage: "Yet the salespeople reported that customers rarely took advantage of the capability. The conversations ultimately led to simplifications in the product's circuitry, significantly lowering costs,  and also helped marketers identify a new customer segment where the product might command a higher price. "
For me this part was an inference of this options but as i was wrong. It was simply the consequence of the good implementation of the "teardown" not the strongest element leading the reduction of cost. Moreover i badly infer this option. Nowhere we talk about redirecting the strategy as a way to lower cost.

E. Scaling back the options given to customers 
"Yet the salespeople reported that customers rarely took advantage of the capability.  The conversations ultimately led to simplifications in the product's circuitry ,  significantly lowering costs "
So the reduction of options consequently leads to a scaling down of costs.

FCK89 · Answer

Hi please can someone correct me if I'm wrong. I got it wrong at the beginning but finally I understood my errors.

2. Which of the following actions does the passage most strongly suggest helped the medical products company lower the cost of manufacturing its electronic device?

A. Adding novel high-performance features to the product
Nowhere in the passage the author talk about it, so we can eliminate this option.

B. Using the same electronic circuit board designs as its competitors
Same as option A

C. Ensuring that changes to the device were invisible to customers
"Seeing the products together allowed the purchasing department to quickly identify simple design changes that, while invisible to customers, significantly lowered manufacturing costs.
I'm not sure that changes to the device were invisible to customers was the strongest actions leading to reduction of cost. According to the passage, it's the identification of the design which led to lower the manufacturing costs.

D. Redirecting its marketing strategies
At the beginning I thought it's was the answer because of this part of the passage: "Yet the salespeople reported that customers rarely took advantage of the capability. The conversations ultimately led to simplifications in the product's circuitry, significantly lowering costs, and also helped marketers identify a new customer segment where the product might command a higher price."
For me this part was an inference of this options but as i was wrong. It was simply the consequence of the good implementation of the "teardown" not the strongest element leading the reduction of cost. Moreover i badly infer this option. Nowhere we talk about redirecting the strategy as a way to lower cost.

E. Scaling back the options given to customers
"Yet the salespeople reported that customers rarely took advantage of the capability. The conversations ultimately led to simplifications in the product's circuitry, significantly lowering costs"
So the reduction of options consequently leads to a scaling down of costs.??

GMAT695 · Answer

Bunuel  Please change the tag to Focus.

Bunuel · Answer

______________________
Added the tag. Thank you!

Adi2899 · Answer

Hey!
Can someone explain Q1 and why C is a better option than E ?
Thanks

GMATNinja   Bunuel

napolean92728 · Answer

1. The information in the passage provides the most support for which of the following statements about what the salespeople reported having observed in relation to customer behavior (   see highlighted text   )?

The correct answer is: C. The salespeople's observations called into question one of the engineers' assumptions about the design of the company's device.

✅   Why C is correct:   
  The passage states:  
 
 This indicates that the salespeople’s report challenged the engineers' assumption that customers valued the product's modularity and options. Their observations thus called into question that design choice, making C the best-supported statement.

❌ Why the other options are incorrect:
A.  "The senior executives of the medical products company had previously been aware of what the salespeople reported having observed." 
 → There's no evidence in the passage that senior executives knew about the salespeople’s observations before the teardown session. The passage doesn’t say whether this was new or known information to them.
B.  "The salespeople, in reporting their observations, were focused primarily on generating new customer segments for the marketers." 
 → This misrepresents the sequence and focus. The salespeople’s reporting led to simplifications in circuitry and helped marketers afterward identify a new segment. The salespeople’s primary focus was not marketing—this was a result, not their intent.
D.  "The salespeople were themselves surprised by what they had observed." 
 → The passage says nothing about the salespeople being surprised. It just reports what they observed. So this is unsupported speculation.
E.  "In reporting as they did, the salespeople did not intend to advocate changes in the design of the company's device." 
 → Again, their intent isn't discussed. While their observation did lead to design simplification, the passage doesn't say what their intentions were when sharing their findings.

2. Which of the following actions does the passage most strongly suggest helped the medical products company lower the cost of manufacturing its electronic device?

The correct answer is: E. Scaling back the options given to customers

✅   Why E is correct:

The passage states:  
 
  This means that scaling back customer options (i.e., reducing modularity) led to simpler circuitry, which in turn lowered manufacturing costs. This is directly supported in the text, making E the best answer.

❌ Why the other options are incorrect: 
 A.  "Adding novel high-performance features to the product" 
 → The passage does not mention adding new features, and such an action would more likely increase costs, not lower them.
B.  "Using the same electronic circuit board designs as its competitors" 
 → The company was inspired by competitors’ configurations, but did not copy them directly. The key outcome was internal simplification, not duplication.
C.  "Ensuring that changes to the device were invisible to customers" 
 → This is mentioned in another context:  
 
  D.  "Redirecting its marketing strategies" 
 → The marketers identified a new customer segment, but this was a byproduct, not the action that lowered manufacturing costs.

3. Based on the passage, it is most likely that the senior executives of the medical products company mentioned in the second paragraph

The correct answer is: D. did not believe teardowns were bound to be unsupervised exercises for engineers or cost-cutting tactics by the purchasing department

✅   Why D is correct:  
  
In contrast to the “many senior executives” who discourage teardowns or see them narrowly as cost-cutting or unsupervised engineer activities, the passage states:  
 
 This clearly implies that the senior executives at this company did not share the narrow, limiting view of teardowns. Instead, they saw teardowns as a collaborative, creative process, and actively facilitated them across departments.

❌ Why the other options are incorrect:
A.  "believed prior to implementing teardowns that the electronic circuitry of their device needed to be simplified" 
 → The need for simplification emerged during the teardown discussions, not beforehand. There's no indication they already believed this.
B.  "were unaware of the engineers' modular approach to the design of their device" 
 → There is no evidence the executives were unaware of the modular design. The passage doesn't say this.
C.  "had little experience with the successful implementation of teardowns" 
 → Again, no mention of their prior experience level is given. What’s described is a successful implementation, not how familiar they were before.
E.  "were motivated to implement teardowns primarily by customer feedback" 
 → There is no reference to customer feedback being a motivator. The teardown process was driven internally to spark innovation, not based on customer complaints or suggestions.

AditiDeokar · Answer

Isn't option D completely recycled? for Q3

napolean92728 · Answer

The third question is a bit easy one, you just need to give a look at the first line of the second paragraph in which the passage contrasts "many senior executives"(from the first paragraph) who view teardowns negatively with the medical products company's executives who took a different approach ("Not so for...").

And I simply eliminated all other options; the reasons for elimination are mentioned in the answer below.

KarishmaB · Answer

Question 1 1. The information in the passage provides the most support for which of the following statements about what the salespeople reported having observed in relation to customer behavior ( see highlighted text )? A. The senior executives of the medical products company had previously been aware of what the salespeople reported having observed. B. The salespeople, in reporting their observations, were focused primarily on generating new customer segments for the marketers. C. The salespeople's observations called into question one of the engineers' assumptions about the design of the company's device. D. The salespeople were themselves surprised by what they had observed. E. In reporting as they did, the salespeople did not intend to advocate changes in the design of the company's device. Given: The engineers had long assumed that letting customers, when purchasing, select various options was advantageous and had emphasized this in the product's design. Yet the salespeople reported that customers rarely took advantage of the capability . The conversations ultimately led to simplifications in the product's circuitry, significantly lowering costs, and also helped marketers identify a new customer segment where the product might command a higher price. The engineers had assumed that this flexibility was required. The salespeople reported that customers rarely took advantage of it. This meant that the engineer's assumption was not correct and hence the design was simplified to lower costs. The flexibility to choose from various options was removed. This change also led to identification of a new customer segment where the product might command a higher price (the customers who wanted to be able to choose from various options - for them the high cost design could be used and more money could be charged from them) Hence, all we can say is (C):The salespeople's observations called into question one of the engineers' assumptions about the design of the company's device. We have no support for anything else. Answer (C) Question 2 2. Which of the following actions does the passage most strongly suggest helped the medical products company lower the cost of manufacturing its electronic device? A. Adding novel high-performance features to the product B. Using the same electronic circuit board designs as its competitors C. Ensuring that changes to the device were invisible to customers D. Redirecting its marketing strategies E. Scaling back the options given to customers As discussed in question 1, scaling back the options given helped reduce costs. Answer (E) Question 3. 3. Based on the passage, it is most likely that the senior executives of the medical products company mentioned in the second paragraph A. believed prior to implementing teardowns that the electronic circuitry of their device needed to be simplified B. were unaware of the engineers' modular approach to the design of their device C. had little experience with the successful implementation of teardowns D. did not believe teardowns were bound to be unsupervised exercises for engineers or cost-cutting tactics by the purchasing department E. were motivated to implement teardowns primarily by customer feedback All we know about those execs is that : " To foster new ideas, the company's senior executives invited employees from the purchasing, marketing, engineering, and sales departments to compare their product to rival products." They brought together people from various departments for the teardowns and got them interacting. So all we can say that they did not believe teardowns were bound to be unsupervised exercises for engineers or cost-cutting tactics by the purchasing department. After all, they brought them together and conducted the tear downs under supervision. Rest we have no information about them - their beliefs, what they knew, their previous experiences or their motivations. Answer (D) Here is a discussion on an interesting RC passage: https://youtu.be/S3XaPkVaDDM

cat202599 · Answer

hey i am very new to rc's i was only able to solve 1 question correctly . can you explain me in ques 3 its given in paragraph 2 so we will check the paragraph 2 only or infer the meaning from other paragraphs too . and please can you suggest me a technique or method to improve my rc's

WhitEngagePrep · Answer

Great question - I would say that "inference" questions, such as this one, often keep their inferences relatively contained to the area around where the question points. However, it is perfectly "legal" to require you to understand broader connections in the passage. Since you asked for some techniques to help improve RC, I'll give you the broad strategy I suggest and then we can talk about question 3's correct answer specifically! First: How to Read for RC I am honestly a bit ambivalent as to whether you take notes or not, BUT I am an absolute tyrant about slowing down your reading at the start of a passage to make sure that you understanding the first 1-3 sentences at 100%. Once you have that connection to the passage, you're welcome to read with a little less attention to complete understanding of every detail! I will also say that RC sentences are written with two techniques in mind. (1) write the sentence so that it makes better sense backwards and (2) write the sentence so that you need the next sentence to actually make sense of this one. For example, sentence (1) is an example of the backwards logic I mention. Notice that the more concrete and contextual information comes at the end of the sentence, NOT the beginning. In fact, this sentence is actually more simplistic to understand if you literally just read the facts from back to front: In order to get fresh thinking about products, companies will dismantle their own as well as their competitors products. In fact, technicians and engineers really favor this, and it is called a product takedown. And sentence (2) is actually an example of the next sentence logic, in that the statement, few get the full value that teardown afford , doesn't really give you any information yet - are they going to tell us about those values, what does this really mean? It's not until the end of the next (very long) sentence that we see something about how teardown might invite creativity and generate new ideas (but even this feels vague so we might have to wait even longer to learn about this). Sometimes we have to slow down and sortof backtrack a sentence to make sure we understand it, and sometimes we need to let the sentence be a bit confusing until we read a little further and then come back to make sense of it! So my general rule - read slowly at first and be ready to have to unscramble dense text (it was written that way on purpose). Once you feel like you're 99.9% clear on the first couple of sentences, summarize them in your mind and then push forward. Stop every few sentences or at least every paragraph to mentally synthesize what you've read and connect it at least loosely back to your understanding of the start. I think of this as weaving the story together! Second: Handling "Inference" questions Inferences have a very specific meaning in the world of the GMAT. In this world (as in all RC honestly), correct answers can always be proven based only on what you've read on the screen. NO outside information is ever necessary, and you should NEVER step outside the knowledge provided. Inference here doesn't mean the same as inference in the real world, where creativity and interesting conjectures are valued. Stick to the facts, and only the facts. Third: Predict answers! Never go to answer choices if the question asks you about anything even remotely specific. That means that unless the question is asking for a main idea or is asking something so generic like "Which of the following was mentioned in the passage," you should 100% be going back to the passage to find proof and pre-think what the answer is allowed to say. Again, ALL answers come only from info in the passage. Period! Here, the question says "passage," so that might be a nod that we need to expand beyond just the paragraph where "these senior executives" are talked about. No matter what, always go back at least one sentence before the item mentioned to read. The relevant place to start is the first sentence of paragraph 2: I've highlighted the two signals that jumped out at me. First, right before the senior managers in question were mentioned, we get "to foster new ideas." Maybe super basic, but at a minimum, we can infer that they had an interest in fostering new ideas. They also did what the rest of the sentence says they did (they invited employees from a few departments to have a product teardown). The start of the paragraph also has a clue - the contrasting start! If something was "not so" for this company and these executives, something must be true for other companies or other executives. This is the clue to look a bit earlier. Paragraph 1 talks about other senior executives in the final sentence: We need to look a bit earlier to confirm that "the practice" in question is the teardown, but it would seem that many sr execs discourage this practice and give two reasons: they see them as unsupervised exercises or they see them as cost-cutting tactics. So if many execs believe these 2 things and this is NOT SO for the senior execs we were pointed toward, it must mean that they don't see teardowns as either unsupervised exercises or as cost-cutting tactics. Okay, so what have we found that an answer could cite: These senior managers: - wanted to foster new ideas - invited some employees from 4 departments to have a product teardown - they don't see teardowns as unsupervised exervises - they don't see teardowns as cost-cutting tactics Now we can move to the last step. Fourth: Process of Elimination / Find a Match to Your Proof A. believed prior to implementing teardowns that the electronic circuitry of their device needed to be simplified we have no clue what they believed before - Eliminate B. were unaware of the engineers' modular approach to the design of their device we have no clue what they were aware of - Eliminate C. had little experience with the successful implementation of teardowns we have no clue of their prior experience with teardowns D. did not believe teardowns were bound to be unsupervised exercises for engineers or cost-cutting tactics by the purchasing department we have 100% proof of this - keep E. were motivated to implement teardowns primarily by customer feedback all we know is that they wanted to do this to foster new ideas, no clue what customer feedback was - Eliminate So only D is left! Hope this, and the bigger process advice helps!

Whit

PriyanshuR · Answer

Option C. Ensuring that changes to the device were invisible to customers. 
Is also something that led to the lowering of Manufacturing cost, but not as significant the action of  Options E.

Manufacturing technicians and engineers favor product teardowns, the

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GMAT Reading Comprehension (RC) Questions

Manufacturing technicians and engineers favor product teardowns, the

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