Start with what happened

You want another team to work as reliably as an experienced workshop employee who prepares kits. The employee has not yet explained the method. You have two records:

• In the first episode, three identical parts were in a common storage area. The employee moved two to a tray, marked it for order A, then confirmed A’s kit. When order B requested two parts, the employee pointed to the one part outside the tray and did not confirm B.
• In the second episode, four parts were available. The employee prepared and confirmed two kits of two parts in succession, marking each tray with its order.

The records show the handling of parts and the confirmations. They omit any other conversations and private notes; other handovers of parts and cancellations were not observed. The workshop’s rule forbids promising the same part to two orders.

Try it before reading the discussion. Explain a possible way of working to a colleague. Distinguish what the records directly support from your explanation of it. What other account could explain the same actions? Identify an unknown that could change how another team should work. Decide which claim needs a further answer and what useful, limited result you can already provide. Use the supplied records rather than filling their gaps with assumptions about warehouses.

Discuss your answer. Moving parts, marking trays, confirming A and declining B are recorded. The records do not show when the employee treats a part as promised. One possible account is that placing a part in a marked tray creates that commitment. Another is that the employee first keeps a private tally of commitments and the tray displays an earlier decision. Both fit the visible actions. Saying that the employee always reserves stock in a computer system would add an unobserved tool, action and repeated practice.

Keep an alternative when it fits the material and changes a later decision. Here the difference matters: the new team can see trays, but cannot see an unknown private commitment. A useful question is, “At what point does a part become unavailable to another order, including before its tray is ready?” The employee’s answer would be an account to compare with the observations where the receiving decision needs that distinction.

You can finish this recovery with two candidate accounts, each stating a possible repeatable way of working and the limits of its support. You can design a future rule while the choice between these explanations of the earlier work remains unresolved. Claiming to have established that employee’s actual repeatable method may need more evidence. A question that could distinguish the accounts does not by itself justify an investigation: compare the benefit and full cost of obtaining the answer with using the limited result already available.

Correct your answer. If you treated one account as established, find the sentence that adds an unobserved fact and restate it as a possible explanation. If you only listed events, add a possible repeatable rule and show which events support it. If you stopped all further work pending an interview, distinguish explaining the old practice from proposing a future one. Explain what your colleague can use now and which claim remains unresolved.