The following appeared in a memo from a vice president of Alta Manufacturing.
"During the past year, Alta Manufacturing had thirty percent more on-the-job accidents than nearby Panoply Industries, where the work shifts are one hour shorter than ours. Experts believe that a significant contributing factor in many accidents is fatigue caused by sleep deprivation among workers. Therefore, to reduce the number of on-the-job accidents at Alta, we recommend shortening each of our three work shifts by one hour. If we do this, our 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 recommendation 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 recommendation.
The author’s notion regarding the effect of excessive working hours to the number of accidents seems logical at the first glance. Workers’ fatigue due to long hours of exacting works will possibly cause accident when the workers lose their focus during the job. However, the condition of accidents from one company to the other must be very specific, and they are not subjects for comparison if the conditions of those two companies widely differ from each other. Also, the experts’ study mentioned by the author does not specify the upper safe limits for workers to hinder any kind of accidents during their job. Unless the author can not satisfy the following questions about those two things, the conclusion from the author can not be believed.
The experts study mentioned by the author only generalize the possible effect of overwork, in this case based on the hours workers spent each shift, to the possible accidents that can occur. Working too long hours definitely will cause too much strain on the workers, and it will probably be a significant factor to the accidents. Otherwise, does the study specify the limit of hours that if the company exceeds the hours will cause any accident? Does the study also reason why long hours cause any single accident in the manufacturing plant? Perhaps, there are also other factors that can affect workers’ concentration during their job other than the duration of work. The difficulties of each jobs may result in different rate of probability of accidents during the work hour. People who work on daunting tasks like operators maintaining the furnaces, or drivers who operate the forklifts to bring heavy objects may have different degree of possibility of causing accidents compared to people who work at the office. Another factor like facilities provided by the company may also cause the accidents if they are not sufficient enough to prevent any major or minor accidents from happening. The author must fill this question about the details of the study to improve the analysis of the previously stated conclusion is based.
The other way to reduce accidents is exactly analyzing thoroughly the underlying or root cause of the accidents within the company. The comparison to other manufacturing company, despite they are in the same sector, may be counterpoductive due to uniqueness in design and purpose of each manufacturing plant, or even each company has completely different type of jobs due to different products that they produce. The Panoply industries might be producing different product compared to Alta manufacturing. Differences in manufacturing processes design will also result in different configuration of machinery and process flow of each company. Eventually, these differences will have different dangers that need to be prevented case by case. If Alta only takes the number of accidents for comparison, then it would be damaging for the future of Alta manufacturing when the data does not match the condition of the accidents in Alta. The question that must be answered is “what are the causes of the accidents in Alta manufacturing?”, “How do those accidents can occur?”, and “How can we prevent them in the future?” If Alta is successful in analyzing the root causes of their own accidents, and doing the countermeasures using the correct methodology, then they will probably better mitigate or even eliminate the accidents once for all.
Another method to address the issue is by questioning the workers themselves. Probably, they have certain conditions that are not related to their jobs inside the manufacturing plant. Numerous factors outside working environment can cause detrimental effect on workers’ focus in the plant. For example, long commuting time can result in fatigue which can cause accidents in the workplace. The company must answer this question in order to get the cause if it is true that the cause is other than work-related factors. If this is the case, then reducing the working hours would be damaging to the company due to loss of productivity, and it would result in worse impact to the company. To better address the condition, Alta must answers these questions carefully.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 12 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 5 2
No. of Sentences: 29 15
No. of Words: 681 350
No. of Characters: 3430 1500
No. of Different Words: 269 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 5.108 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.037 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.697 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 242 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 189 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 127 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 95 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.483 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.382 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.552 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.297 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.436 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.105 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 553, Rule ID: ALSO_OTHER[1]
Message: Use simply 'there are other' or 'there are also'
Suggestion: there are other; there are also
...nt in the manufacturing plant? Perhaps, there are also other factors that can affect workers’ concen...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 133, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...se of the accidents within the company. The comparison to other manufacturing compa...
^^^
Line 5, column 414, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...o different products that they produce. The Panoply industries might be producing d...
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, however, if, may, regarding, so, then, for example, kind of, it is true
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 30.0 12.9520958084 232% => Less auxiliary verb wanted.
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 35.0 28.8173652695 121% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 94.0 55.5748502994 169% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3529.0 2260.96107784 156% => OK
No of words: 681.0 441.139720559 154% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.18208516887 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 5.10842213422 4.56307096286 112% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.82208097196 2.78398813304 101% => OK
Unique words: 284.0 204.123752495 139% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.417033773862 0.468620217663 89% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 1103.4 705.55239521 156% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 7.0 1.67365269461 418% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 28.0 19.7664670659 142% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 69.3031274142 57.8364921388 120% => OK
Chars per sentence: 126.035714286 119.503703932 105% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.3214285714 23.324526521 104% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.0 5.70786347227 53% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 16.0 6.88822355289 232% => Less negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.209847461038 0.218282227539 96% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0650498416946 0.0743258471296 88% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0410602441347 0.0701772020484 59% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.138301620056 0.128457276422 108% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0249478162441 0.0628817314937 40% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.1 14.3799401198 105% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.06 12.5979740519 104% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.4 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 154.0 98.500998004 156% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.0 12.3882235529 105% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Write the essay in 30 minutes.
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.