The following appeared in a memo from a vice president of Quiot Manufacturing.

The following appeared in a memo from a vice president of Quiot Manufacturing.

“During the past year, Quiot Manufacturing had 30 percent more on-the-job accidents than at the nearby Panoply Industries plant, where the work shifts are one hour shorter than ours. Experts say that significant contributing factors in many on-the-job accidents are fatigue and sleep deprivation among workers. Therefore, to reduce the number of on-the-job accidents at Quiot and thereby increase productivity, we should shorten each of our three work shifts by one hour so that employees will get adequate amounts of sleep.”

Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the prediction and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the prediction.

The author recommends that Quiot should shorten their work shift by one hour in order to reduce on-the-job accidents and increase productivity. However, the analogy view between Quiot and Panply is highly suspect because it is entirely likely that there are differences between the two.

The first question is the number of employees separate in Quiot and Panoply. The author mentions that Quiot’s accidents have 30 percent more than Panoply’s, we can’t compare the pros and cons between them since we don’t have the exact base number in these two companies. For example, we assume that Quiot has 20,000 employees and Panoply has 200, according to the argument Quiot has 30 percent more than Panoply in accidents. If Quiot’s exact number of accidents is 13 and Panoply’s 10, we can find that Quiot’s accident rate is only 0.65%, which is low, but Panoply’s accident rate is 5%. In the assumptions, we see the importance of the base number.

The second question is the experts’ suggestions which were mentioned by the author. The experts say that fatigue and sleep deprivation can be the factors contributing to on-the-job accidents. However, we have no idea about the backgrounds of these experts, is there any preference value in their saying? What’s their major field? For example, if these experts are professional soft engineering, their suggestions are just like a normal person without professional.

The third question is about the content of the work between Quiot and Panoply. We have no ideas what workers in Quiot actually do and their work environment. Perhaps working in Quiot is risker than Panoply because of its work type but not the correlation in rest quality.

The author needs to answer the questions above to strengthen his or her argument.