Hello,

Can u pls evaluate my Analysis of an Argument Essay

Thanks,
Raghu

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.”

The author of the passage argues that over a period of time, organizations will learn to do things better and become more efficient. Because of this new found efficiency organizations will minimize costs and maximize profits.

The argument made by the author has three flaws.

First, the author uses an inappropriate anology to support his argument. The author points to improvement in film processing and suggests that food processing is similar to film processing. This anology is faulty because improvement in film processing may be because of technological advance in the industry that has nothing to do with the organization’s learning. Moreover, the process, material and resources needed for film processing are entirely different than those of food processing.

Second, the Author assumes that more efficiency necessarily means more profits. This assumption need not be true. For example, an increase in competition may force an organization to become more cost efficient and at the same time reducing the company’s profit margin and the profits. The author also ignores the possibility of change in regulations, outbreak of food related diseases and other uncontrollable factors that may affect the company’s profitability irrespective of improvements in the efficiency.

Third, the author points to 25th anniversary of the company as further evidence of company improving its efficiency. In referncing to this fact the author is assuming that the older the company is, the efficient it will be. This is a faulty assumption because the company might have changed it’s line of business 5 times, had a 200% turnover in manpower and might have completely changed its operating procedures 10 times in the last 25 years. All of this if happened would have greatly negated the company’s efficiency.

In summary, the author’s argument that organizations become more efficient and profitable over time is faulty and not well supported by examples. The argument would have been stronger if author used an anology of another food processing company operating under similar conditions as Olympic foods. The author also should have provided more evidence of how the company had learned to be cost effective in last 25 years and how that is an indicative of future things to come.

Hi, thanks for posting your essays! Just an FYI that instructors don't respond to posted essays - we just have too much to do with all of the question posted and essays tend to be the thing that is least "transferable" (that is, you can learn a lot, but probably other people won't learn as much from looking at our responses to your essays, unlike the multiple choice questions).

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