GMAT阅读练习及答案(11)

文章作者 100test 发表时间 2007:03:10 10:20:15
来源 100Test.Com百考试题网


  Passage 2

  Since the late 1970s, in the face of a severe loss of

  market share in dozens of industries, manufacturers in

  the United States have been trying to improve produc-

  tivity-and therefore enhance their international

  (5) competitiveness-through cost-cutting programs. (Cost-

  cutting here is defined as raising labor output while

  holding the amount of labor constant.) However, from

  1978 through 1982, productivity-the value of goods

  manufactured divided by the amount of labor input-

  (10) did not improve; and while the results were better in the

  business upturn of the three years following, they ran 25

  percent lower than productivity improvements during

  earlier, post-1945 upturns. At the same time, it became

  clear that the harder manufacturers worked to imple-

  (15) ment cost-cutting, the more they lost their competitive

  edge.

  With this paradox in mind, I recently visited 25

  companies; it became clear to me that the cost-cutting

  approach to increasing productivity is fundamentally

  (20) flawed. Manufacturing regularly observes a “40, 40, 20”

  rule. Roughly 40 percent of any manufacturing-based

  competitive advantage derives from long-term changes

  in manufacturing structure (decisions about the number,

  size, location, and capacity of facilities) and in approaches

  (25) to materials. Another 40 percent comes from major

  changes in equipment and process technology. The final

  20 percent rests on implementing conventional cost-

  cutting. This rule does not imply that cost-cutting should

  not be tried. The well-known tools of this approach-

  (30) including simplifying jobs and retraining employees to

  work smarter, not harder-do produce results. But the

  tools quickly reach the limits of what they can

  contribute.

  Another problem is that the cost-cutting approach

  (35) hinders innovation and discourages creative people. As

  Abernathys study of automobile manufacturers has

  shown, an industry can easily become prisoner of its

  own investments in cost-cutting techniques, reducing its

  ability to develop new products. And managers under

  (40) pressure to maximize cost-cutting will resist innovation

  because they know that more fundamental changes in

  processes or systems will wreak havoc with the results on

  which they are measured. Production managers have

  always seen their job as one of minimizing costs and

  (45) maximizing output. This dimension of performance has

  until recently sufficed as a basis of evaluation, but it has

  created a penny-pinching, mechanistic culture in most

  factories that has kept away creative managers.

  Every company I know that has freed itself from the

  (50) paradox has done so, in part, by developing and imple-

  menting a manufacturing strategy. Such a strategy

  focuses on the manufacturing structure and on equip-

  ment and process technology. In one company a manu-

  facturing strategy that allowed different areas of the

  (55) factory to specialize in different markets replaced the

  conventional cost-cutting approach; within three years

  the company regained its competitive advantage.

  Together with such strategies, successful companies are

  also encouraging managers to focus on a wider set of

  objectives besides cutting costs. There is hope for

  manufacturing, but it clearly rests on a different way of

  managing.

  1.The author of the passage is primarily concerned with

  (A) summarizing a thesis

  (B) recommending a different approach

  (C) comparing points of view

  (D) making a series of predictions

  (E) describing a number of paradoxes

  2. It can be inferred from the passage that the

  manufacturers mentioned in line 2 expected that

  the measures they implemented would

  (A) encourage innovation

  (B) keep labor output constant

  (C) increase their competitive advantage

  (D) permit business upturns to be more easily predicted

  (E) cause managers to focus on a wider set of objectives



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