The falling revenues that the company is experiencing coincide with delays

[ngotrung]

4. 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.”





The author of the report concludes that the company should move the purchasing manager to sales department and bring a scientist from research department to be the manager of the purchasing department in response to the relationship of delays in manufacturing and falling revenues. The author bases his conclusion on the generalization that the inappropriate background of the purchasing manager is the cause of poor planning in purchasing metal, which, in turn, is the cause of the manufacturing delays. The author’s reasoning has two serious problems



First of all, the author assumes that the manufacturing delay is the only causes of falling revenues. But there are many other causes that can leads to falling revenues: the competition dampens the price of products, reduces the market share of the company. If the author cannot point out that the manufacturing delays is the direct and only cause that reduces the revenue, then the report’s recommendation is not valid to consider.



Assuming that the poor planning that lead to the manufacturing delay is the only causes of falling revenues, it is not necessary that these poor planning is caused by the purchasing manager’s inappropriate background. The author point out that because the purchasing manager know a little about the properties of metal, he fails to plan well for purchasing. But there is no direct relation between poor planning and knowledge of metal properties. In my opinion, it is the excellent background in business that helps the purchasing manager to plan well.



In sum, the argument relies on two questionable assumptions. The author could strengthen the argument by showing that the manufacturing delay is the direct cause of falling revenues and the background of the purchasing manager leads to the poor planning in purchasing raw materials.

[Sybersport]

There really are no right or wrong answers to this type of question, so I will say that the assumptions you based your response on are pretty good.

I think the fatal flaw here is that the author assumes an understanding of the properties of metals is necessary to solve the purchasing problem, which will in turn solve the problem of falling revenue's. You touched on that, so you're on the right track.

A few pieces of advice:

Do not bother repeating the main point of the argument back to the reader - it is not necessary. You can just reference the text rather than saying "the author of the report concludes..." and basically rewrite what we already know.

In your second paragraph, you started to discuss a reason for the loss of revenue - but you didn't develop the idea properly. You need to work through it more, so that I understand what you mean. How does the competition dampen the price of the product? And how does this lead to a loss of market share? You need to be clear on your reasoning, the point you made was disjointed and incomplete.

In your third paragraph, I think you made an error in reasoning. You ended by stating that the background of the person in question is what makes them a good planner. Unfortunately, this doesn't really fit well with your argument, and you didn't develop the idea to make it fit. You need to expand on that thought and help me understand how it relates. My guess is that you want to say the person in question is a good planner, and that it is an unfair assumption to suggest he is not - so why not clearly state that?

Lastly, there are some grammar errors, but unfortunately I don't have the time to comb through them. You should continue to work on your grammar.

[ngotrung]

Thank you so much for your insightful comments, I really feel I didn't develop the paragraph well, but I don't know what it is. You show me exactly what i missed. I hope to received more of your comments in my next essay

[sambhavgarg]

This argument states that by replacing the Purchase manager by a scientist from research department will increase the companies revenues.
But the argument is seriously flawed, as it considers few assumptions.

To begin with, it may be possible that the main reason of falling revenues is slump in demand for heavy machinery, or the other departments of the company are inefficient.
For example, the companies policy might have changed which are causing the delay in purchasing metals.

Secondly, the argument assumes that by having knowledge about properties of metal, on can be a good purchase engineer. This assumption is wrong as the purchase manager should be skilled in his or her planning about maintaining inventory at the at efficient level, and having knowledge about the metals would not make a good purchase manager.

Finally, the author assumes that bringing a scientist from research department will increase the revenues, but we don't know anything about the managerial skills of the scientist.
It is possible that the scientist may be a expert in his field but might not be able to handle the managerial responsibilities efficiently.

Hence i believe that the argument is seriously flawed and it can be more well reasoned if it considers all the above mentioned assumptions and present a logical relation between the assumption and the conclusion.