Stockholders have been critical of the Flyna Company, a major furnitur

Question

Stockholders have been critical of the Flyna Company, a major furniture retailer, because most of Flyna's furniture is manufactured in Country X from local wood, and illegal logging is widespread there. However, Flyna has set up a certification scheme for lumber mills. It has hired a staff of auditors and forestry professionals who review documentation of the wood supply of Country X's lumber mills to ensure its legal origin, make surprise visits to mills to verify documents, and certify mills as approved sources of legally obtained lumber. Flyna uses only lumber from certified mills. Thus, Flyna's claim that its Country X wood supply is obtained legally is justified.

Which of the following, if true, would most undermine the justification provided for Flyna's claim?

Which of the following, if true, would most undermine the justification provided for Flyna's claim?

A. Only about one-third of Flyna's inspectors were hired from outside the company.

B. Country X's government recently reduced its subsidies for lumber production.

C. Flyna has had to pay higher than expected salaries to attract qualified inspectors.

D. The proportion of Country X's lumber mills inspected each year by Flyna's staff is about 10 percent, randomly selected.

E. Illegal logging costs Country X's government a significant amount in lost revenue each year.

ID: 500106
CR12701.02

Pankaj0901 · Answer

D. The proportion of Country X's lumber mills inspected each year by Flyna's staff is about 10 percent, randomly selected.

I have gone through the explanations by experts in this thread, but I still seem to be missing something. I have broken my head but I am not understanding how Option D is undermining the claim.

....It has hired a staff of auditors and forestry professionals who review documentation of the wood supply of Country X's lumber mills to ensure its legal origin, make surprise visits to mills to verify documents, and certify mills as approved sources of legally obtained lumber. Flyna uses only lumber from certified mills. Thus, Flyna's claim that its Country X wood supply is obtained legally is justified.

Let's consider an example to understand better:
Total number of lumber mills in Country X = 100
Total number of lumber mills whose documentation is reviewed for their legal origin = 100
Total number of lumber mills that had surprise visits = 10 (Just trying to make a case for option D: 10% of all lumber mills)
Total number of lumber mills legally certified = 10 (assuming all mills that had surprise visits ere approved as legally obtained sources)
This implies, total number of lumber mills used by Flyna = 10 ("Flyna uses only lumber from certified mills.")

What am I missing in this example? How is option D undermining the claim?

AndrewN  - Request you to please enlighten me and help pinpoint in my example what I am missing, if possible. Thanks in advance.

AndrewN · Answer

Hello,  Pankaj0901 . I think the point you are missing is that Flyna is claiming that all of  its Country X wood supply is obtained legally , on the basis of these audits, when answer choice (D) tells us that a mere tenth of its suppliers of Country X wood are, in fact, inspected each year. This leaves significant room for doubting the claim, since up to 90 percent of its suppliers could be furnishing  illegally  obtained lumber in a given year. I suspect that the penultimate line of the passage is giving you difficulty:  Flyna uses only lumber from certified mills.  As part of an argument, this premise  cannot  be taken as fact. Rather, it is a view that is used to advance the conclusion. You could almost see the final two lines in a different light:  Since Flyna uses only lumber from certified mills, Flyna's claim that its Country X wood supply is obtained legally is justified.  This does  not  mean that Flyna uses only lumber from  the ten percent of  mills that are certified. Rather, the argument is assuming that what holds for the ten percent will hold for the entire chain of suppliers.

Does that help clarify the matter? Thank you for thinking to ask.

- Andrew

achloes · Answer

AndrewN   GMATNinja 
 
I'm trying to keep an open mind but D still feels like a stretch compared to A.

Can it not be that perhaps Flyna only sources its wood from 10% of Country X's lumber mills? In other words, Country X could be illegally logging most of its wood, but Flyna visits 10% of the country's mills (seeing as D does not say 10% of the mills Flynna sources from) and only buys from those that pass its checks. In which case, Flyna would be justified in claiming that "its Country X wood supply is obtained legally".

Appreciate your thoughts!

HC1993 · Answer

Why can't we choose option A when it's weakening the conclusion? how is it out of scope, I don't understand. Because as far as I know and see, new information can be used to weaken the argument. no?

GMATNinja · Answer

You're correct that we don't know the exact lumber mills which Flyna uses, or the overall percentage. It's also true that  if  the lumber mills that Flyna uses are inspected, we'd expect the wood to be legally obtained. So  if  the 10% that Flyna uses happen to be the ones that get inspected, (D) would not weaken the argument, as you suggest.

Notice, however, that (D) specifies that the lumber mills inspected each year are " randomly  selected." So if the inspections are done at random, that rules out the idea that Flyna is specifically inspecting only the mills it uses.

The argument concludes that Flyna's claim that it obtains wood legally is justified because of the inspections. But if the inspections only verify a  randomly  selected 10% of the lumber mills, that leaves 90% that might have illegally obtained lumber, and that Flyna might use. Since this weakens the argument that Flyna obtains its wood legally, (D) is correct.

I hope that helps!

GMATNinja · Answer

As you suggest, new information can definitely be used to weaken a conclusion. But as  MikeScarn  points out above, the problem with answer choice (A) is that it really doesn't weaken the conclusion.

Let's take a closer look:

You might be tempted to conclude from this that Flyna's inspectors (i.e. 2/3 of the inspectors) would be more likely to let lumber mills get away with illegally obtained wood. But is this idea supported?

Well, keep in mind that ALL of the inspectors are working for Flyna. So if Flyna's inspectors have a conflict of interest, it would apply equally to all the inspectors, not just the ones hired from inside the company.

Put another way, for (A) to be correct, we'd need to assume that Flyna employees hired from  within  the company are more likely to be corrupt than Flyna employees hired from  outside  the company. But at the end of the day, they're both Flyna employees, so there's really no reason to conclude this.

Additionally, the justification for (A) rests on the assumption that Flyna inspectors  actually have  a conflict of interest -- i.e., that Flyna secretly wants to use illegally obtained lumber. But again, we have no reason to believe this. Maybe illegally obtained lumber is lower quality? Maybe it's just as expensive? Maybe it's deficient for some other reason? Regardless, we have no reason to think that Flyna would actually prefer illegally obtained wood, or that the inspectors would have a conflict of interest.

For all those reasons, (A) doesn't weaken the argument, so it can be eliminated.

I hope that helps!

sk05 · Answer

@GMATNinja

Option D states that the proportion of mills inspected is 10%. It can be so that the staff inspect only 10% and provide certifications to those. And, since, Flyna only buys from certified mills, it can buy from those 10% mills that are certified. We don't care if the staff inspected the 90% or not because Flyna doesn't necessary needs to buy from those mills.

Option A is the correct answer in my opinion since the group of inspectors are not independent and they might be biased in their inspection for reasons such as costs

Option A is the correct answer in my opinion since the group of inspectors are not independent and they might be biased in their inspection for reasons such as costs

MartyMurray · Answer

This question isn't ideal since the reasons why (D) undermines the case for Flyna's claim aren't completely clear since the relationship between what (D) says and what goes on with Flyna and lumber mills in Country X is not entirely clear or logical. Does Flyna use lumber from all the mills in Country X? Does it certify only mills that it gets lumber from or also certify mills it doesn't get lumber from? Why does it randomly inspect 10 percent of all the mills Country X?

What would make more sense is that Flyna's staff inspects each year 10 percent of the mills from which Flyna gets wood, but that's not what (D) says.

I guess the fact that Flyna's staff inspects only about 10 percent of the mills in Country X casts doubt on the conclusion that "Flyna's claim that its Country X wood supply is obtained legally is justified," since mills that haven't been inspected recently could be producing lumber illegally. So, since (D) does cast at least a little doubt on the conclusion, it is the best choice.

All the same, since the scenario presented by the OA isn't clear and doesn't make complete sense, this question isn't great.

That said, (D) is the best choice since (A) doesn't really mean that the inspectors don't do a good job. After all, we don't have information indicating that inspectors hired from within the company have reason to fake the inspection results or the inspectors hired from within the company are not as honest as inspectors hired from outside the company. In fact, if there's something fraudulent going on with the inspections, then inspectors hired from outside the company would presumably also engage in the fraudulent behavior since they too are working for Flyna.

Also, notice that the passage states as fact that the inspectors "review documentation of the wood supply of Country X's lumber mills to ensure its legal origin, make surprise visits to mills to verify documents, and certify mills as approved sources of legally obtained lumber." So, the passage appears to indicate that the inspectors do in fact ensure that the wood is of legal origin. Thus, the honesty of the inspectors is not open to question, meaning that (A) does not indicate any flaw in the certification system.

MalachiKeti · Answer

AjiteshArun  can you pls chime in? So many experts have explained but still clueless

Flyna uses only lumber from certified mills.

Process of certification:
Step 1:
professionals who review documentation of the wood supply of Country X's lumber mills to ensure its legal origin,
Step 2: make surprise visits to mills to verify documents, 
Step 3: and certify mills as approved sources of legally obtained lumber.

First of all whats happening here? Is documentation, surprise visit and certification happening first then the procurement?
Or procurement happening first then everything else?

Either way pls explain whats the flaw/gap in argument and how D makes sense if Flyna uses only lumber from certified mills - as long as it is certified whats the issue?

AjiteshArun · Answer

Hi MalachiKeti,

The most important thing here is to  prioritise targeting the certification process . This will help us take a couple of troublesome options out.

Stimulus  :
1. The author implies (but does not state directly) that certification depends on both a review of documentation and surprise visits. We can attack either or both of these.

2. We can attack the staff of auditors and forestry professionals.

3. We can also attack the statement "Flyna uses only lumber from certified mills".

We should also be open to things not stated in the stimulus that could undermine Flyna's claim that its X wood supply is obtained legally.

Option A  : This option uses  only  before one-third, so we focus on whether {mostly Flyna employees} is better or {mostly non-Flyna employees} is better.

Generally speaking, we can assume that both hiring and oversight are easier internally (working with external providers and consultants is generally more opaque). Therefore,  option A strengthens the argument, which is the opposite of what we need .

Option B  : I like this option. Cutting subsidies can be expected to lead to a further increase in illegal logging. Given that illegal logging is already widespread, even more illegal logging could crowd out legal supplies of wood.

However,  this option doesn't directly target Flyna's processes .

Option C  : This option could have been good if it had told us that Flyna compromised on the quality of its inspectors. But that's not what it says. Instead, C tells us that Flyna has had to pay "higher than expected salaries" to attract qualified inspectors.  We don't care about the cost as long as the inspectors are qualified.

Option D  : This option stands out, for multiple reasons.

Firstly, checking for compliance almost always involves a trade-off. 10% may be a common target (as reed990 points out in  this post ), but that doesn't mean that it's a good target.

Secondly, frequency is also an issue. Even though Flyna uses only certified mills, there is always the risk of noncompliance post-certification.  That is, once a mill has been certified, how can Flyna be sure that it (the mill) hasn't started (or gone back to) using wood obtained from illegal logging?

By the way, this is a real concern. For example, in the garment and cocoa industries, many producers put on a show for the occasional inspection and then go right back to using (for example) child labour.

Effectively,  a mill could easily go 10 years or more without being inspected again . Therefore option D gives us a major reason to doubt Flyna's claim.

Option E  : If illegal logging costs country X's government a significant amount in lost revenue, that strengthens the claim that illegal logging is widespread. It's safe to say that the more serious a problem is, the harder it is to overcome. However, we should go negative on option E, because  it doesn't target Flyna's processes .

pearrrrrrr · Answer

Not to doubt the solution but I was curious about the answer choice D.

D. The proportion of Country X's lumber mills inspected each year    by Flyna's staff    is about 10 percent, randomly selected.

from the argument, I understand that the mills was inspected by 'a staff of auditors and forestry professionals not    Flyna's staff

Can you point out where did I misunderstand the argument?
 GMATNinja   MikeScarn

Pif96 · Answer

To be honest, about the "D" answer, the term "randomly selected" made me fall into error (The proportion of Country X's lumber mills inspected each year by Flyna's staff is about 10 percent,  randomly  selected).

It seems to say that in a statistical approach the lumber mills have been inspected. In fact, nowhere exists a way to inspect each element of a production!

For me is definitely A the right answer ! These are the GMAT questions that i hate anyway....

GMATNinja · Answer

I'm late to the party again here, but in case it helps somebody out there: we're told that Flyna  hired  a staff of auditors and forestry professionals. Since that staff was hired by Flyna, it's accurate to refer to those auditors and forestry professionals as "Flyna's staff".

I hope that helps a bit!

kabirgandhi · Answer

Here's my problem with this weakener:

It is mentioned that Flyna Company only buys its wood from certified mills. If in fact it does, to me it seems irrelevant how much the % of lumber mills unchecked is.

Even if they are checking only 10%, as long as they are buying from that verified 10%, it does not weaken the conclusion that Flyna's wood in Country X is legally obtained. If it was mentioned or even implied that the purchase of wood was not limited to verified mills, then this would have been valid, but the passage explicitly rules that out.

Extremely poor question IMO

KarishmaB   WhitEngagePrep  - could you help me understand if there's anything I'm missing?

KarishmaB · Answer

The question is fine with only option (D) being the possible answer. 
We are given that it uses wood from "certified mills." It is not the same as "the supply is legal." That is the author's opinion, his conclusion. 
What if the certified mills later obtain wood illegally? It is possible since only 10% of mills are actually inspected annually.

bagarwal11 · Answer

Feels like this choice is also making a whole lot of assumptions about the below-

1. Certification once provided may be ineffective since the facilities that are not being inspected for next few years may start procuring illegally.
2. The fact that the process explained by Flyna is followed which involves inspections and certifications and then it buys from them- even if the country has 90% of its lumber not inspected a particular year maybe that's not required to meet Fylna's deman- point is that whether Fylna is buying from other than those 10% that are certified. (Assuming that 10% market share in a particular segment is also considered as a major player and 10% supplier would also be enough to meet its RM demands)

Just some food for thought, please do comment when you get time.

GMATNinja · Answer

Keep in mind that we are not looking for an answer choice that disproves the claim. We are just looking for the choice that would most undermine the justification provided for Flyna's claim. Is it possible that the claim is still accurate even if (D) is true? Sure, but that doesn't actually matter. As for the first point you bring up, that does illustrate how the wood supply might be obtained illegal despite certification efforts. That would work against Flyna's claim, but it doesn't impact choice (D). As for your second point, choice (D) says that the 10% chosen for inspected are randomly selected. If Flyna was ONLY utilizing a specific 10% of the lumber mills and if Flyna inspected that same subset of the mills every year, that would certainly support the claim. But in that case, the selection of mills for inspection wouldn't be random at all. Instead, that would be a very deliberate and intentional selection of the specific mills being utilized. And there's nothing in the passage to make us think that Flyna is only utilizing certain mills in Country X. All we know is that the wood comes from Country X's lumber mills and that Flyna has set up a certification scheme for those mills. Without any other information, we have to assume that (D) refers to a random selection of 10% of Country X's lumber mills. For a bit more on that, check out this post: https://gmatclub.com/forum/stockholders ... l#p3106658. And for more on choice (D) in general, check out these posts: https://gmatclub.com/forum/stockholders ... l#p2528071 https://gmatclub.com/forum/stockholders ... l#p2639691 https://gmatclub.com/forum/stockholders ... l#p2874378 https://gmatclub.com/forum/stockholders ... l#p2955524

sriramsundaram91 · Answer

People are justifying this by the fact that 10% is not sufficient, therefore it undermines the certification, this is a debatable answer choice as it can be true that the 10% of the total lumber sites makes up 100% of the supplies to Flyna, so this type of question in GMAT is clearly incorrect.

And OG's official explanation tells us that 10% of the total is randomly checked, this would mean a site could go untested for ten years.

The proportion of Country X's lumber mills inspected each year by Flyna's staff is about 10 percent, randomly selected.
This option can be interpreted as the 10% that were inspected contributes to 100% of the suppliers that supply to Flyna and within this 10% of the chosen companies we keep checking randomly.. Looks like it is a badly written answer choice just to make you choose something else.

Also this question has no logic and common sense as a company I would have the roster of approved companies after the audit and the checks I perform as a CEO will be from this roster (randomly).

So People defending GMAT will tell me how is this supposed to not test your business skill as a CEO but to parse text and find logical flaw and "stick to the Passage" you are creating new assumptions in your head that gmat doesn't like.

I have solved so many questions, only a few of them like this question really looks snarly.

siddharth_ · Answer

Rejected all in the first go, then chose A here.
After having gone through the entire thread, I have realized the following.

Reason to choose A -- assumed - 2/3 of staff is internal; they can be corrupt and provide wrong certification for the company's sake. Gives me a reason to doubt.
But the problem is this assumption. One can, in fact, assume the exact opposite, that the external staff would be more corrupt (they might own some mills), and given the internal ones are more in number, then this choice would actually act as a strengthener.

Now the reason to reject D was -- the choice does not explicitly mention '10% of WHAT.'
To everyone who's confused here, it seemed like the choice is saying that 10% of [ALL mills in the country] are inspected by Flyna's staff, then certified, and then Flyna would use the wood from there ONLY. And thus, this choice is not weakening the justification anyhow.

What the experts are suggesting is -- the right way to read this choice is --

The proportion of Country X's lumber mills, inspected each year by Flyna's staff, is about 10 percent [of all mills from where Flyna sources wood], randomly selected.

GMATNinja KarishmaB - can you kindly review this and approve / disprove?

AbhishekP220108 · Answer

Hi  siddharth_  let me try to help with the argument and option choices

Stockholders have been critical of the Flyna Company, a major furniture retailer, because most of Flyna's furniture is manufactured in Country X from local wood, and illegal logging is widespread there. However, Flyna has set up a certification scheme for lumber mills. It has hired a staff of auditors and forestry professionals who review documentation of the wood supply of Country X's lumber mills to ensure its legal origin, make surprise visits to mills to verify documents, and certify mills as approved sources of legally obtained lumber. Flyna uses only lumber from certified mills. Thus, Flyna's claim that its Country X wood supply is obtained legally is justified.

Which of the following, if true, would most undermine the justification provided for Flyna's claim?

There is a company named Flyna Company; the stockholders of this company are doubtful about FC. Why? Because in Country X, illegal logging is widespread, and FC manufactures 7 out of its 10 furniture from local wood. Ok, so stockholders are critical because they are doubting the authenticity of the wood used to manufacture. Fair enough.

A contradiction presented by the author is that FC has set up a certification scheme to verify the authenticity. In its certification scheme, it has a staff of auditors and forestry professionals who make surprise visits to lumber mills from woods are taken for manufacturing, and review the document to ensure that wood at lumber mills is from authentic sources and not illegal. FC uses only lumber from those mills that are certified by this staffs.

At last the author concludes that Flyna's claim that its Country X wood supply is obtained legally is justified.

Which of the following, if true, would most undermine the justification provided for Flyna's claim?

Question asked to weaken the justification given for the FC claim. So any option that doubts the justification given can be the required weakener. Lets evaluate A and D because most of the doubts are on these 
 
A. Only about one-third of Flyna's inspectors were hired from outside the company.

Even if 1/3rd of FC inspectors are hired, they can still review the documents of most of the lumber mills. So it is not creating a doubt.

D. The proportion of Country X's lumber mills inspected each year by Flyna's staff is about 10 percent, randomly selected.

Well, this option talks about the proportion of mills that are being inspected for certification; if 10% of the mills are randomly selected, then what about the 90% of the mills? If those 90% are not certified and FC uses local wood, then we are creating doubt about the authenticity of the lumber.

Hope this helps.

Stockholders have been critical of the Flyna Company, a major furnitur

Prep Toolkit

Top 5 GMAT Debrief Videos

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards

GMAT Critical Reasoning (CR) Questions

Stockholders have been critical of the Flyna Company, a major furnitur

Prep Toolkit

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards