写的第一篇文章求意见

Vicky0722

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.”

Discuss how well reasoned... etc.

In response to the falling revenue, the director of the company recommends to replace the current purchasing manager with a scientist and move the current manager to the sales department. To justify his recommendation, the author states that the falling revenue is caused by the insufficient planning in purchasing metals. He also states that a scientist will have better knowledge on properties of metals than the current purchasing manager. At the first glance, we may find his recommendation somewhat appealing. However, after careful analysis, we find his argument suffers from a number of flaws that would render the author’s line of reasoning questionable.

First, the author fails to build a causal relationship between the falling revenue and the manufacturing delay. Just because two events happen at the same time does not necessarily mean that the falling revenue is caused by the manufacturing delay. There could be some other reasons that led to both falling revenue and manufacturing delay. The report’s recommendations, without compelling evidence to support the causal connection between these two events, are not worthy of consideration.

Second, the author claims that hiring a scientist as the purchasing manager would solve the problem because a scientist knows better about the properties of metals. However, this argument is overly single-sided. The author solely focus on the merit of the plan but ignores the demerits. For example, a scientist may not have as much as negotiation skills as the current purchasing manager, a drawback may leading to higher purchasing costs and falling revenue. Also, a scientist may not know how to purchase proper amount of raw materials so that the inventory could be at the right level. Indeed, drawbacks of hiring a scientist may overweigh the advantages. Lacking a comprehensive analysis of the situation, it is author’s claim is not compelling.

To conclude, the author’s argument is not convincing because the author fails to provide enough evidences to support his argument and his argument is oversimplified. To strengthen the argument, the author would have to provide more evidences to prove the causal relationship between the revenue and manufacturing delay, as well as to have a thorough cost-benefit analysis on hiring a scientist. Without these information, the argument remains unconsolidated and open to debate.