PrepTest 140, Section 3, Question 10
Company president: Whenever you subcontract the manufacturing of(33 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(9 more words not shown)
- AWhen the president's(19 more words not shown)
- BCompanies that subcontract(13 more words not shown)
- CThe company president(15 more words not shown)
- DWhen consumers know(17 more words not shown)
- EWhen a company(20 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Who has the control after the work is handed off?
Imagine a builder bringing in another company to build a house. The first builder no longer directly controls everything that happens on the job. The second company could do excellent work or poor work; the loss of control alone doesn't tell us which. It means some decisions now belong to someone else.
That's the arrangement the president describes. The president's company gives up some control when it hires a manufacturer, but insists that the manufacturer keep complete control over the product it supplies.
Now follow the chain one step farther. What if that manufacturer hired a third company to do the manufacturing? The first rule would apply again: subcontracting means losing some control. But we were told this manufacturer retains complete control. So it cannot pass this manufacturing work along to another subcontractor.
What we’re looking for
That's my prediction for the inference question. The chain can go from the president's company to the manufacturer, but for these products it must stop there. Be careful to keep control separate from quality: having less direct control doesn't establish that the finished product is worse.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
Further subcontracting would make the chosen manufacturer lose some control over the product. That would violate the president's stated requirement that the manufacturer maintain complete control. So the president's company cannot allow that next handoff for the manufacturing in question.
- B
Losing control doesn't necessarily leave a company disappointed. A subcontractor might do excellent work. The president says nothing about how often companies are dissatisfied with what their suppliers produce.
- C
The president accepts some loss of the company's own control by subcontracting. Requiring the supplier to retain complete control is different from insisting that the president's company retain as much control as possible. The supplier and the president's company are two separate organizations.
- D
Consumers haven't been discussed. We don't know whether they know who manufactured the products or whether that knowledge would affect their confidence. We cannot supply a consumer reaction from a rule about companies' control.
- E
Control isn't a guarantee of superior quality. An in-house production run could be defective while a subcontractor delivers excellent products. Even if maintaining control can be useful, nothing here shows that every in-house product will be better than its subcontracted counterpart.
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