Supervisors memo: At the present rate of manufacture we will not have

Question

Supervisor’s memo: At the present rate of manufacture we will not have the 1,200 circuit boards assembled in time to ship them to the customer. We currently have 10 workers, working 8 hours a day, assembling the boards, and to date they’ve assembled 400. In order to finish the customer’s order in time, I’ll need to have each of the workers work an additional 2 hours for each of the 10 work days between now and the deadline.

One can determine the hourly rate at which each worker assembled circuit boards up to the date of the supervisor’s memo by dividing ____ 1 ____circuit boards by the product of ____ 2 ____ worker-hours and the number of days since the workers began assembling the circuit boards.

Select  Circuit boards  for the option that fills the blank labeled 1 in the given statement, and select  Worker-hours  for the option that fills the blank labeled 2 in the given statement to create the most accurate statement on the basis of the information provided. Make only two selections, one in each column.

ID: 100301

kushipk10 · Accepted Answer

There is a catch in this question : Question is asking "One can determine the hourly rate at which each worker assembled circuit boards  up to the date of the supervisor’s memo  " which means only till the above statement of supervisor is passed, i.e only 400 boards are ready, and at the rate of 10 workers with 8hrs per day. Hence the answer. Hope I did clear your doubt

KarishmaB · Answer

Till Memo Data:
We currently have 10 workers, working 8 hours a day, assembling the boards, and to date they’ve assembled 400.

So hourly rate of work done (how much work is done each hour) till now = Work/Time 
Work done = 400 boards
Time taken in hrs = 10 * 8 * N (N is the number of days for which they worked) = 80N hrs 
10 workers worked for 8 hrs every day so every day 80 worker hrs were being put in and this was done for N days giving us 80N total worker hrs put in.

Hourly rate of work done = 400/80N

To finish:
In order to finish the customer’s order in time, I’ll need to have each of the workers work an additional 2 hours for each of the 10 work days between now and the deadline.

One can determine the hourly rate at which each worker assembled circuit boards up to the date of the supervisor’s memo by dividing _______________ circuit boards by the product of ______________ worker-hours and the number of days since the workers began assembling the circuit boards.

How did we get hourly rate till memo date? Work done till memo date/Total worker hrs taken till memo date = 400/80N

So we divide 400 boards by product of 80 worker hrs and N, the number of days.

Hence the two blanks will have 400 and 80 respectively.

rahulkashyap · Answer

Wouldn't you also need the number of days worked until the memo?

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ssgodfather · Answer

Hey! I was stumped on the same thing. I answered this wrong in my practice test and could not understand how the hourly rate is being calculated without the number of days! Then.... I went back and re-read the question. And it says 'dividing the number of circuit boards by the PRODUCT of ---------worker-hours and NO OF DAYS...' Its amazing how important attention to detail is in the GMAT!

NaeemHasan · Answer

Till now 400 circuit boards have been made. These boards have been made by 80 working hours each day. Hence, if you want to determine the rate of assembling then you have to divide 400 by the product of employee and employees working hour each day i.e; 80.

Ayush1692 · Answer

The question is simple, even though I got it correct the 2nd time.

Before the Memo:

400 boards were manufactured.

10 workers --> 8 hrs/ day for 'n' days --> 400 boards ; (We don't know ho many days the workers took to manufacture 400 boards)
1 worker --> 80 hrs/ day for n days--> 400 boards
1 worker --> 80 hours * n days --> 400 boards

rate = Board/hour = (400 boards) / (80 hours * n days)

1. 400
2. 80

Dbrunik · Answer

I looked at the difficulty of this question being 65%, and I immediately thought that I was going to be wrong after solving for it. This question is much easier than it looks. Literally all you have to do is take the given number of workers how much they’re working per day and then divide it by how many they’ve already created right so it’s literally just 80 and 400.

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bb · Answer

I agree. For some reason I am seeing people struggle with the easiest of the DI questions 🤷‍♂️

nekr0 · Answer

Exactly! Probably a speculation or bias in the form of "how can a question be so easy/straight, there must be some kind of hidden layer that i might be missing"

bb · Answer

I can tell you that it’s really weird when you get an easy question on the GMAT. I have previously spent more time on an easy question than a hard one just because I couldn’t figure out if I was just not seeing a trap or it was that easy. 😂

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Dbrunik · Answer

Fine by me since this is an official guide question. Which is great, the OG questions like this are not out to trick you or “catch you out” on tedious or maniacal things (unlike many of these junk prep provider questions). It’s about reasoning through complexity in an efficient manner.

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nikitathegreat · Answer

What does supervisor's memo means? the entire argument is a memo and hence shouldn't we have taken nos. of the additional hours and the total work = switchboards?

Thanks

cheshire · Answer

The memo is a communication from the supervisor summarizing:
 
 The current production status:
 
 10 workers 
 8 hours per day 
 So far, 400 circuit boards have been assembled  
 
 The concern:
 
 The team will not complete 1,200 circuit boards in time unless they work extra  
 
 The plan:
 
 To meet the target, each worker must work 2 additional hours per day for the next 10 workdays

The supervisor’s memo includes both past and future information,
 but this specific question only uses the historical production data.

Pixelm · Answer

Hello, there is something i don't udnertand here, the question is about the rate of each worker. shouldn't be then: 400/(80* 10 ) ?

Bunuel · Answer

What does the 10 refer to?

The rate we need is  per worker, per hour . Up to the memo, the workers assembled 400 boards. To find the rate of each worker, we divide the total boards (400) by the total worker-hours.

There are 10 workers * 8 hours per day = 80 worker-hours per day. Multiply by the number of days they’ve been working (call it d). So the total worker-hours = 80d.

That means the rate per worker per hour = 400/(80d).

bhavyagmat · Answer

I am not able to grasp unambigously what they are asking for? "One can determine the hourly rate at which each worker assembled circuit boards up to the date of the supervisor’s memo by dividing ___1___ circuit boards by the product of ___2___ worker-hours and the number of days since the workers began assembling the circuit boards."

Why did they fill the blank, as it apprently seems that they are giving this information that rate is 1/2 rather than asking about it.

Am i being to pedantic or there is some semblance of logic in what I am saying.

More importantly - is the phrasing at par with GMAT question?

Bunuel · Answer

The sentence isn’t giving the rate. It’s describing the process to find it, which quantities must be divided to get each worker’s hourly rate. The blanks are meant to test whether you know what goes into that division.

The question comes from the official GMAT guide, so yes, this is exactly how such questions appear on the actual GMAT.

The question comes from the official GMAT guide, so yes, this is exactly how such questions appear on the actual GMAT.

bhavyagmat · Answer

Thanks for the reply, and a prompt one too!

ChiranjeevSingh · Answer

Passage Analysis

Supervisor's memo: At the present rate of manufacture we will not have the 1,200 circuit boards assembled in time to ship them to the customer.

At the current manufacturing rate, the company will not be able to assemble 1200 circuit boards within the timeline. In essence, the rate of manufacturing needs to be increased to avoid the delay to the customer.

We currently have 10 workers, working 8 hours a day, assembling the boards, and to date they've assembled 400.

So we have 10 workers working eight hours a day, so overall we have 80 working hours a day, and so far 400 boards have been assembled. We don't know how many days have been taken to assemble these 400 boards.

In order to finish the customer's order in time, I'll need to have each of the workers work an additional 2 hours for each of the 10 work days between now and the deadline.

The supervisor says that to finish the customer's order in time, which means that to produce the remaining 800 boards in time, each worker will need to work 10 hours a day, and there are 10 days remaining before the deadline. So we have 10 workers and 10 days remaining, and each of the workers works for 10 hours a day. We will be able to produce 800 boards. So I can see that we need 10 × 10 × 10, i.e., 1000 working hours, to produce the remaining 800 boards.

Question Analysis

One can determine the hourly rate at which each worker assembled circuit boards up to the date of the supervisor's memo

This is talking about the hourly rate of assembling the boards  up to  the date of the memo. So this is not talking about the rate of assembling  after  the memo. We are given that before the memo, 400 boards have been assembled, and there are 10 workers working eight hours a day, but we don't know how many days have been taken to assemble these 400 boards.

We can calculate the hourly rate of assembling by dividing the number of boards assembled by the total number of hours taken to assemble those boards. The total number of hours will be depending on the number of days, which we don't know yet.

by dividing ____1____ circuit boards by the product of ____2____ worker-hours and the number of days since the workers began assembling the circuit boards.

In the first blank here, we'll have  400  because that is the number of circuit boards that have been assembled up to the date of the memo. This number will be divided by the total number of hours taken to produce the 400 boards.

The total number of hours will be a product of the number of workers, the number of hours per day each worker works, and the total number of days.

In the second blank here, you just need worker-hours, and this second blank will be multiplied by the number of days to get the denominator or the total number of hours. The second blank will just be a product of the number of workers and the number of hours each worker works per day. The second blank will be 10 × 8, that is  80 .

The question is quite straightforward, but a lot of people may falter in understanding and paying attention to the fact that the question is asking about the calculations up to the date of the memo rather than after the date of the memo.

The second mistake that people will make will be in terms of understanding the second blank. They would expect the second blank to be the total number of hours, which means that they will expect the number in the second blank to also include the number of days, but that is not the case here.

So essentially, people will have problems in comprehending what the question is actually asking. And the reason people will have problems is that they're not really paying attention to the shifts, to the exact thing that the question is asking; they are just trying to quickly guess—and guess is the key word here—what the question is asking. These kinds of guesses do not work in Data Insights questions, which do not follow a typical or standard framework.

Supervisors memo: At the present rate of manufacture we will not have

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Supervisors memo: At the present rate of manufacture we will not have

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