Laura Ahumada 10B

TOEFL ESSAY

Both, the writing and the listening passage introduces us to how the A. O. Smith
company, which wanted to apply a new wedge system for the purpose increasing the
productivity of their car frames, had diverse effects after this. The idea was having a
piecework wage system which consisted of paying the employee proportionally with
the number of pieces he or she produced and incrementing employee morale. This
had negative and positive repercussions in the company.

The reading passage discusses how after the piecework wage system was
implemented the laborers started producing a bigger quantity of car pieces. This
demonstrated that being paid a bigger amount of money, if they composed more car
pieces, and less if they produced and smaller amount, was a good incentive. It also
comments on what they thought about morale increasing by making them more
responsible and committed to their work and therefore producing more pieces and
getting a bigger paycheck.

The listening passage debates about how even though it had positive effects,
that are mentioned in the reading passage, it also had unsatisfactory results and they
were not satisfied with the quality of the items they produced. The employees started
focusing on making quantity over quality due to the desire of getting a higher
paycheck. The laborers started to produce more pieces by elaborating them faster and
therefore the quality decreased considerably. Because of this, the frames must be
repaired before delivering them. Due to this situation they had to replace the
piecework wage system with a new one which decreased the defective pieces from
20% to 3%.