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. Exper

Vice president of Alta Manufacturing claims that his company will benefit from shortening each of three work shifts. He argues that this alteration assures that workers in his company will get adequate amounts of sleep, and in consequence the number of on-the-job accidents will diminish. Based on unfounded assumptions, additional questions are needed to be answered in order to decide whether recommendation of vice president will bring the predicted result.

First, the author claims that during the past year his company had thirty percent more accidents than Panoply Industries. Further comparison between this companies would be indispensable to support author's conclusion. Information on the number of workers in both companies would be crucial. In bigger company with more workers, more accidents could happen. We cannot compare percent of on-the-job accidents if we do not have data about companies' size.

Secondly, it would be desirable to look closely at the data provided by experts on factors contributing to on-the-job accidents. Is sleep deprivation the major factor casing the accidents? Was the statistical sample taken into account in the expert's research big enough? Was it representative of all shifts? Affirmative answers to this questions would ensure credibility of conducted experiment and allow us to draw proper conclusions.

Additionally, knowing when during the day most accidents happen, we could find another solutions for this problem without shortening work shifts. Maybe most of accidents happen during specific shifts only. In this case decreasing the number of people working during that shifts and increasing productivity on other shifts would most probably bring satisfying results.

Providing that experts' opinion is true and statistically significant, it would be beneficial to investigate employees' sleep habits. Is it absolutely necessary to shorten work shifts, in order to extend workers' amounts of sleep? Maybe appropriately adjusting time when the shift begins would improve workers' sleep, and make them more vigilant.

To summarize, vice president of Alta Manufacturing fails to substantiate his argument that shortening each of three work shifts will contribute to less on-the-job accidents. Without additional evidence, assumptions made by the author are unsubstantiated. Recommendation given in this note requires additional examination in order for the company to take further action.