Please rate the argument.

[vijay_dj]

The following appeared in a report presented for discussion at a meeting of the directors of a company that manufactures parts for heavy
machinery.

“The falling revenues that the company is experiencing coincide with delays in manufacturing. These delays, in turn, are due in large part to poor planning in purchasing metals. Consider further that the manager of the department that handles purchasing of raw materials has an excellent background in general business, psychology, and sociology, but knows little about the properties of metals. The company should, therefore, move the purchasing manager to the sales department and bring in a scientist from the research division to be manager of the purchasing department.”
Discuss how well reasoned . . . etc.

The above argument states that the purchasing manager needs to be replaced with a scientist from the research division, states that the lack of knowledge about the properties of the metals is the reason behind the delays in the manufacturing of the products and in turn has cascaded into the company’s revenues. Though the argument looks coherent and appears convincing up to a point, there are a few concerns which arise when analyzed further on the reasoning arrived by the author.

The issue reported is inherent on the “poor planning” in the purchasing of metals, and the author reasons that replacing a purchasing manager with a scientist might solve the issue regarding the lack of knowledge of metals, but would this in turn solve the main issue regarding the poor planning in purchasing? A knowledge in a particular aspect of a product is not sufficient to get a well devised planning in place but needs a picture of overall lifecycle of the product and the necessary articulating skills to get a plan in place for each stage of the product, in general a background on the business involved which appears to be absent in the case of the scientist replacing the manager.

As per the argument stated, the revenues are merely coinciding with the delays from the manufacturing side; does this mean that the delays are the primary cause for the falling revenues? The reasoning arrived at replacing the manager in charge of the procurement of the raw materials, a cause of the delays in the manufacturing which may or might not be the cause behind the dip in revenues is faulted.

The conclusion is arrived with a faulty assumption as the base, in any case the author needs to present the reader with some data or statistics indicating the reason for a dip in revenues is as a result of the delays, if such the conclusion stated could have been viewed from a different angle and might have even been accepted. Even if the shortcomings are all addressed with the author arriving at suitable explanations, moving the incompetent purchasing manager to a Sales department, the same issues could be faced by the Sales department as well.
Thus the argument is as a result of a hasty generalization and fails to address a lot of questions arising out of the statement. It needs much more statistics and data to arrive at a suitable conclusion.

[Infinite7]

That's a very good essay, vijay dj. The grammar is good (just correct the first sentence of the fourth paragraph that supposed to say (I think) ...The conclusion was made with a faulty comparison....., It looks like you were making a conclusion on the fourth and fifth paragraph, so make a combo of the two (it'll have a better construction), the organization and length are good, the points you've made are very good....I'm not an expert but this is just my opinion.