Please REVIEW my AWA

Hey! This is my first time posting anything in this forum! Please review my essay since I'm in need of constructive feedback. Thank you!


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 fi ve‐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.”

Organizations more often than not view their cost and subsequent profit that they gain in terms of their level of efficiency in production and processing. In the preceding argument the author claims that over time the cost of processing goes down as firms learn how to do things better since they become more efficient with experience. He compares two industries to further emphasize his conclusion that experience enables organizations to minimize costs and maximize profit. Stated in this way the argument, manipulates facts conveying a distorted view of the situation; it reveals examples of leap of faith, poor reasoning and ill-defined terminology. The conclusion of the argument relies on an assumption for which there is no clear evidence. Hence, the argument is unconvincing as such and has several flaws.

Firstly, the most grave flaw in the argument is that it readily assumes that the printing industry and the food industry are all but the same so a common principle of profit maximization can be applied to both. This statement is a bit of stretch because the functions of a color film processing company greatly varies from that of a food processing company. They differ from each other in terms of target market, demand, supply and technological factors. For example, the demand for food by an average person will be greater than the demand for colored films. Clearly, it’ll be unfair to draw a comparison between these two industries. Thus the primary issue with the author’s reasoning lies in his unsubstantiated premises because it lacks any legitimate evidentiary support.

Secondly, the argument claims that as organizations gain more experience they become more efficient which enables cost minimization and profit maximization. This again is a weak and an unsupported claim as the argument does not demonstrate any correlation between experience-efficiency and cost-profit. To illustrate, an organization may remain in the market for many years without much growth or with very little profit just enough to keep it sustained in the market. Without having any previous records of financial data of Olympic Foods, it’ll be dubious to say that in it’s 25th year Olympic Foods will make maximum profit at minimum cost.

Thirdly, the author’s draws a wrong comparison between the cost of a 3-by-5-inch print in 1970 to its cost in 1984. This is can be proven with illustration. In 1970 the cost of a print was 50 cents for five day service, i.e., 10 cents for one day service however in 1984 it costed 20 cents for one day service. This proves that the cost of printing in fact rose from 1970 to 1984 which directly contradicts the author main premises that the cost falls with experience. Hence the author gives a distorted view of the situation.

In order to assess the merits of a certain situation it is essential to have full knowledge of all the contributing factors. One is ought to accept the claims made by the author with skepticism unless he provides clarification about the above mentioned flaws by giving a statistically sound example along with more similarities between the two industries and more financial data about Olympic Foods. Without convincing answers to these questions, one is left with the impression that the claim is more of a wishful thinking rather than substantive evidence.

In conclusion, the argument is flawed for the above mentioned reasons and is therefore unconvincing. One anecdote does not make an argument sound. If the author truly hopes to change his readers mind on the issue, he would have to largely restructure his argument, fix the flaws in logic and provide evidentiary support until then it will remain open to debate.