题目： The following appeared as part of an annual report sent to stockholders by Olympic Foods, a processor of frozen foods: “Over time, the costs of processing go down because as organizations learn how to do things better, they become more efficient. In color film processing, for example, the cost of a 3-by-5-inch print fell from 50 cents for five-day service in 1970 to 20 cents for one-day service in 1984. The same principle applies to the processing of food. And since Olympic Foods will soon celebrate its 25th birthday, we can expect that our long experience will enable us to minimize costs and thus maximize profits.” Discuss how well reasoned . . . etc.
文章 The author concludes that Olympic Foods with a twenty-five years long history will minimize its cost and maximize its profits in the future because the long experience of a film processing company indicates a downward trend of the cost of 3-by-5-inch print over 14 years. The author has made several mistakes, making the argument unconvincing to people.
Firstly, the author believes that the cost of 3-by-5 inch colour print can be representative of the cost of its all patterns of colour prints. Actually, a firm processing firm can has many other patterns of colour prints such as 4-by-8 or 5-by-12 inches. The author did not mention the influence of the cost reduction of its other patterns of prints on its total business. The total cost can rise over 14 years if the 3-by-5 inch only occupies a very small percentage and the cost of other patterns of prints increase dramatically. These insufficient data provide no guarantee that the cost reduction of 3-by-5 inch colour print means an increased efficiency in this film processing industry.
Even we assume that the cost reduction of 3-by-5 inch print decreases its total manufacturing cost successfully. A myriad of other factors including huge research fees, increased wages of workers and the behaviours of competitors will set up barriers for firms to minimize cost and maximize profits. To be specific, the wages of workers are usually pegged with the inflation rate normally. Over 14 years, the firm needed to pay its workers more and more money. In addition, the firm was likely to improve its technology know-how in order to remain its competitiveness in this industry over 14 years. Moreover the company may have charged a lower price when faced the pressure of other competitors. If the loss outweigh the gain from increased efficiency of the manufacturing process, the film processing firm actual generate less profit than before.
The conclusion is still unfounded even the film processing firms has used its long experience to minimize it cost and maximize its profits successfully because the assumption made by author that indicates that the film processing industry has a very high degree of similarity with food industry is lacking supporting evidence. Compared with print, food is much more perishable. There fore, the huge expenditure of transportation and storage is inevidentable and hard to reduce even the company has a long history in this industry. The use of the film processing example will more likely be inapplicable to food industry.
In conclusion, this is a week argument. In order to strength the point that Olympic Food will minimize its cost and maximize its revenue, this author must provide more information about how the other factors changed over 14 years and find other evidence which are closer to the food industry.