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 argument that the company should move the current purchasing manager to the sales and bring in scientist from the research division to be the manager of the purchasing division is unwarranted and is based on a fallacious reasoning. The argument omits certain key considerations that need to be addressed to be above to get a holistic view of the situation in consideration. In addition, the argument fails to provide substantive evidence to be able to prove or even support the conclusion from the given premises. The below passage aims to elaborate certain flaws in the argument and to provide potential remedies to considerably strengthen the argument.
First, the author invariably assumes that the purchasing manager should have knowledge about the properties of the metals. But, the author did not provide any fact substantiating this assumption. It could be possible that the role of purchasing manager is restricted to just getting raw materials in the most economical way and may not be required to know about the properties of the metals. In addition, the failure in proper planning in purchasing materials, highlighted in the argument, could be due to the incorrect estimates or numbers received from sales and market research teams about the demand for the product.
Second, the author believes that the scientist from the research department possess the other skills required to be a purchasing manager in addition to knowing about the properties of the metals. Most of the times, the role of a researcher in a company does not involve liaising with the procurement vendors or evaluating the bids received and selecting the most optimal supplier for a raw material, the skills necessary for a good purchasing manager.
Moreover, the author mentioned that the fall in revenue coincided with the delays in manufacturing. The arguments assumes a causal relationship between these without a corroborative proof. The fall in revenue is caused by the fall in demand due to lack to innovation in the product.
To remedy the flaws highlighted above the argument needs to include evidences supporting each of those flaws. Had the argument stated that a good knowledge of metals is necessary for successful planning of purchasing raw materials, that the scientist from research department possesses the skills of successful planning of raw material purchasing and can mitigate the problem and that the fall in revenue is caused by the lack of raw materials, it would have been much more strong. Overall, the argument is flawed for the above mentioned reasons and remains open to debate.