Real-Life Decision Making
You're an industrial chemist working for a pulp and paper company.
It's your job to design, monitor, evaluate and modify chemical processes.
Lately, things have been pretty hectic at the plant. Everyone has been
rushing to get a new chemical solution ready for production. Today is the
day when it's supposed to be manufactured on a large scale. And
the company executives want the solution put into full use by tomorrow. Everyone
is tense, hoping the production goes off without a hitch so they can start
using it tomorrow.
In spite of the big rush, you decide you want to test the solution one
last time after it's gone through the mixing process. You're responsible
for the solution, so you want to take some extra time to make sure everything's
all right.
Unfortunately, after the testing, you don't feel any more certain
of the solution than you did before. According to the test, the level of acidity
is just slightly higher than what it should be. It's not a drastic difference,
and it could just be the result of a rushed test. Still, it's not exactly
what it should be.
You're torn about what to do next. You'd like to run the test
again, but if you do, the whole factory will have to wait for you to finish.
If you get bad test results again, you may very well have to halt production
altogether and take the solution back to the lab.
Your other choice is not to re-test the solution. Yet if the acidity levels
really are off, you might be responsible for an industrial-sized batch of
bad solution. That would delay the whole manufacturing process too.
Either way, people are going to be looking to you for explanations. What
do you do?