The following appeared in a memo from the Board of Directors of Butler Manufacturing.
"During the past year, workers at Butler Manufacturing reported 30 percent more on-the-job accidents than workers at nearby Panoply Industries, where the work shifts are one hour shorter than ours. A recent government study reports that fatigue and sleep deprivation among workers are significant contributing factors in many on-the-job accidents. Therefore, we recommend that Butler Manufacturing shorten each of its work shifts by one hour. Shorter shifts will allow Butler to improve its safety record by ensuring that its employees are adequately rested."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The memo from the Board of Directors of Butler Manufacturing recommends shortening of office shifts by an hour to improve workers’ safety and ensure that they are well rested. This recommendation is based on two premises, namely 1) Comparison of on-job accidents with nearby Panoply Industries, which works for an hour less. 2) A recent government study on fatigue and sleep deprivation as major contributors to onsite accidents. The premises have several important and logical questions unanswered that could seriously weaken the stated recommendation.
Firstly, comparison between Butler Manufacturing and Panoply industries is specious without considering several factors like their size, product complexity, proportion of employees working in hazardous plants, operating conditions etc. Size and status of a company decide the efforts that need to go into products manufactured. Probably Panoply Industries could be a local cottage industry serving the immediate locality, whereas Butler might be an international conglomeration with a huge list of customers. Products have varying conditions for manufacturing. For example, dairy industry and car manufacturing plants have varying requirements and processes involved. Also, the dangers involved substantially vary across product manufacturers. Software related operations are not prone to on site accidents as seen in electrical industries.
Though the stated government study provides evidence about the role of fatigue and sleep deprivation in accidents onsite, we cannot be assured of the applicability of the study to Butler without knowing personal details of the employees, their actual hours and work related stress data. Until we don’t know the family background and stress due to other factors in an employee’s life, we cannot blame stress during the work hours for fatigue or sleep deprivation. Moreover, the memo does not talk about the actual work hours of the employees. What if the present work hours is just six hours? The employees would have the rest of the day to themselves to spend. Also, the memo does not present any data on the work related stress statistics to back it’s conclusion.
To conclude, though the present work hours could be tempestuous for the employees, the arguments stated in the memo do not sufficiently back the claim. In order to make a stronger case, we need more information about the kind of products manufactured and their complexity, size of company, financial stability, workforce population and their personal relationships, availability of safety measures, actual work hours and work related stress statistics of the employees.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 401 350
No. of Characters: 2186 1500
No. of Different Words: 212 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.475 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.451 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.997 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 172 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 133 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 93 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 72 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.278 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 12.256 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.311 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.512 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.116 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, firstly, if, moreover, so, well, whereas, for example, kind of
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 9.0 19.6327345309 46% => More to be verbs wanted.
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 14.0 11.1786427146 125% => OK
Relative clauses : 4.0 13.6137724551 29% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 15.0 28.8173652695 52% => OK
Preposition: 56.0 55.5748502994 101% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2262.0 2260.96107784 100% => OK
No of words: 400.0 441.139720559 91% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.655 5.12650576532 110% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.472135955 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.14731631712 2.78398813304 113% => OK
Unique words: 217.0 204.123752495 106% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.5425 0.468620217663 116% => OK
syllable_count: 691.2 705.55239521 98% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 74.2132138371 57.8364921388 128% => OK
Chars per sentence: 119.052631579 119.503703932 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.0526315789 23.324526521 90% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.21052631579 5.70786347227 74% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.16472185861 0.218282227539 75% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0492378101488 0.0743258471296 66% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0543197517463 0.0701772020484 77% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.107204474767 0.128457276422 83% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0549712494135 0.0628817314937 87% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.8 14.3799401198 110% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 41.7 48.3550499002 86% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 15.55 12.5979740519 123% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.3 8.32208582834 112% => OK
difficult_words: 117.0 98.500998004 119% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 12.3882235529 97% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 16.0 11.9071856287 134% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 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.