Q10 - Company president: Whenever you subcontract the manufa

[smiller]

Question Type:
Inference

Stimulus Breakdown:
The stimulus consists of the following statements:
subcontract manufacturing → lose some control over quality
we subcontract some manufacturing
we subcontract → subcontractor maintains complete control over quality

Answer Anticipation:
The contrapositive of the first statement tells us
~ lose any control over quality → ~ subcontract manufacturing
This, combined with the final statement, means that the companies discussed in the final statement—the ones that the company president uses as subcontractors—do not, in turn, subcontract any of their manufacturing work.

Correct Answer:
(A)

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) This is correct. It matches our anticipated inference.

(B) "Disappointed" is out of scope. The stimulus describes losing control over quality, but that doesn't necessarily mean anyone will be disappointed in the quality of products.

(C) "Insists" is also out of scope. The stimulus is about situations where a company maintains control, or loses some control. We don't know if the company president insists on having a certain amount of control.

(D) "Consumers" puts answer choice (D) out of scope as well.

(E) "Uniformly better quality" is, again, out of scope. The stimulus explains who has control over quality in different situations. However, no part of the stimulus describes any product as being of better quality than any other. As far as we know, all products mentioned in the stimulus could be of equal quality.

Takeaway/Pattern: Inference questions require you to read the information in the stimulus very literally. Stating that a company "loses some control over quality" or "maintains complete control over quality" does not actually tell us if the quality of any product will be good or bad.

#officialexplanation

[asafezrati]

I got the right one by eliminating the other four. Problem is that answer choice A seems to imply some impact of cause-effect relationship ("does not allow the subcontractor to..."), whereas the president just stated the present situation and his present subcontractors.

Isn't it an "inference-must be true" question stem? A seems like an answer for a "most" question.

[stargirlish]

It says that when you subcontract -- Lose some control.

Company only subcontracts manufacturing when the manufacturing companies have COMPLETE CONTROL.

We can infer that the manufacturing companies can not have any subcontracts because they need complete control.

[shirleyx]

An attempt to explain this question out;

Question type: INFERENCE

There is no argument per say, just bunch of statements.

- subcontract --> lose some control over manufacturing quality
- we do subcontract ---> with those who maintain complete control over quality

Going to the answer choices...

(A) can't find anything wrong with it, leave for now
(B) unsupported, we don't know anything about disappointment
(C) can't be true, because if the president were to insist on "as much control as possible' he would not have subcontracted, OUT
(D) we don't know about the consumers, unsupported
(E) we do not know anything about in-house production, out

Confirming (A), as it is the only one remaining.

(A) Yes, this one makes sense, because further subcontracting would mean more loss of control over manufacturing quality. and if this happens the second statement in the stimulus will be false. so further subcontracting can not happen.

[zhangjiwen325]

I am confused by this problem (and it might be a really stupid one), although seems few people are... I guess I got this question quite wrong in some way cause I initially rule out five answer choices.

My question would be, if subcontract makes someone lose control over the quality of that product, how could the president of the company subcontract yet maintain complete control over the quality of the product?

Hope someone could help. Thanks in advance!

[ohthatpatrick]

Great explanation, Shirley, thanks!

Don't worry about asking questions if you're confused, zhangjiwen325.

The company president never said that he retains complete control over his company's finished products.

He's saying that his company only works with subcontractors that retain complete control over THEIR products.

His company DOES NOT have complete control over all products, because his company DOES use subcontractors.

But the subcontractors his company uses DO have complete control over all their products, because the subcontractors DO NOT themselves use subcontractors.

I think you just got the wrong impression from the Company President's statements. Because his first sentence says that "subcontracting = a loss of some control", you may have assumed that he is opposed to losing any control and assumed that he is aiming to have total control. But none of that is said.

If you renovating a bathroom and wanted total control, you would do it all yourself.

If you needed a subcontractor and wanted to retain as much control as possible, you would want to make sure that your subcontractor was renovating the bathroom all by herself. If SHE were handling the sink and the shower but hiring her own subcontractor to do the toilet, then SHE would lose some control over the new bathroom, which means YOU would have lost a little more control, now that there are two people besides you affecting the quality of work.

Make sense?

[DeborahH630]

Can some please explain in more detail why answer choice C is wrong and answer choice A is correct. I am still not understanding and could really use some more guidance on A as a correct answer choice???