Manager: A new machine that can bring down our operational costs by 20...
Argument Analysis
Pre-Thinking
Conclusion Clarification
The author concludes that the company should switch to the new machines because the savings from their use would be more than the additional training costs for existing employees and the cost borne due to the mentioned loss in production.
Pre-Thinking Approach
Let’s see how we can make the conclusion more believable. To do so, we will look at the logical structure, focusing on linkage1. Thus the way to strengthen the conclusion will be to support this linkage by providing a new piece of information that strengthens our belief in the same.
Linkage#1 – …the savings over a year would more than compensate for the additional training costs for existing employees and the costs because of loss of production.
- Strengthener –An option that supports that no other factor would increase the estimated costs of training and cost due to loss in production would defend the manager’s suggestion, strengthening it further.
With this pre-thinking in mind, let’s evaluate the answer choices.
Answer Choices
A
The employee turnover rate in the company is almost negligible.
Correct
This option is written along the lines of our pre-thinking linkage. It states that the attrition rate at this company is low. Thus, there wouldn’t be frequent replacements of existing employees, which could have increased the training costs. So this fact strengthens our belief in the manager’s position that the costs wouldn’t outweigh the savings.
B
Few existing employees would have some apprehensions in switching to the new machines.
Incorrect - Irrelevant
The apprehension of employees has no direct connection with the conclusion, which deals with the economic soundness of the switch.
C
The company can suffer production loss for over a month without reneging on its customer commitments.
Incorrect - Irrelevant
This statement says that the company won’t dishonor its customer commitments due to production losses. The ability to honor customer commitments doesn’t have any relation to the cost or savings aspect of switching to the new machines.
D
There is no other machine in the market that can cut operational costs for the company by more than 20%.
Incorrect - Irrelevant
It tells us that there is no other machine in the market that cut the operational costs by more than 20%. However, information about other machines is not relevant to the switch from EMs to NM.
E
The quality of the products produced by the new machine will not be higher than the quality of the products produced by the existing machines.
Incorrect- Insufficient information
This statement suggests that the quality of the products produced by the NM will be either of the same quality or of a lower quality than the ones produced by the EM. If quality of the product is a fact under consideration, then the choice does not give us sufficient information to evaluate what impact this information has on the economic viability of the plan.