Dartmouth Assessment Centre screens and trains employees for a computer assembly firm in Halifax. The progress of all trainees is tracked and those not showing the proper progress are moved to less demanding programs. By the tenth repetition, trainees must be able to complete the assembly task in 1 hour or less. Torri Olson-Alves has just spent 5 hours on the fourth unit and 4 hours completing her eighth unit, while another trainee, Julie Burgmeier, took 4 hours on the third and 3 hours on the sixth unit. Should you encourage either or both of the trainees to continue? Why?

Discourage Torri from continuing. Encourage Julie to continue.

Explanation:

The progress of all trainees is tracked. Those not showing good progress are moved to less demanding programs. This means that there is hope of still doing/getting a job, if they don't pass this test.

REQUIREMENT: By the 10th time doing the test, trainees must be able to complete the task in a maximum of 1 hour.

1st Trainee: Torri Olson-Alves

5 hours on Unit 4;   4 hours on Unit 8

Should Torri be encouraged to continue? NO.

There are 10 units or repetitions in all. If Torri spends 5 hours on Unit 4 and spends 4 hours on Unit 8, then Torri is slow or isn't making much progress. After 4 repetitions, her marginal product only increased by an hour. She most likely won't make it to 1 hour by the 10th repetition.

2nd Trainee: Julie Burgmeier

4 hours on Unit 3;   3 hours on Unit 6

Should Julie be encouraged to continue? YES.

Julie makes a progress of 1 hour after 3 repetitions. We can predict that after another 3 repetitions (on Unit 9) progress would be made again and by Unit 10, she would have met the required benchmark.