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 tha

By making a comparison between Quiot Manufacturing, which factory has a higher percentage of on-the-job accidents, with Pannoply Industries plant, which different from Quiot Manufacturing by their work shifts and the percentage of on-the-job accidents, the vice president of Quiot Manufacturing wants to indicate that Quiot Manufacturing should shorten work shifts to adequate amounts of sleep of their workers. I agree about this suggestion. But there are some questions in this argument as follow.

First, the on-the-job accidents happened in Quiot Manufacturing is 30 percent more than the number of Panoply Industries plant's accidents for the same reason, if the survey is accurate and representative, could not prove workers in Panoply Industries plant's are safer than Quiot Manufacturing's. If Panoply Industries plant has only ten workers, but the quantity in Quiot Manufacturing is huge, Panoply Industries plant keep a higher rate of on-the-job accidents.

Even assuming there are same quantity of worker in these two different factory;and Quiot Manufacturing has a bigger number of accidents than Panoply Industries Plant. we cannot judge the reason of this phenomenon is work shifts time. Experts' opinion--which I take leave to doubt--indicates that the most important factor in on-the-job accidents is fatigue among workers. In fact, so many factors play more important role on on-the-job accidents, such as the decision of machine, layout of factory,light, voice, mood of workers,etc.

Even assuming the opinion of experts are right, that fatigue and sleep deprecation among workers is the significant contributing factors in on-the-job accidents, we needn't copy the work shifts schedule of Panoply Industries plant. Different factory has different indication, Quiot Manufacturing should find a new way to arrange schedule of work shifts proper to itself.

To draw a conclusion, while it may be true that Quiot Manufacturing should change its work shifts, this argument, which rife holes and assumptions, is not strong enough to support the opinion.