Rate my AWA
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10 Apr 2018, 09:26
“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 twenty-fifth birthday, we can expect that our long experience will enable us to minimise costs and thus maximise profits.”
The argument states that over time, the costs of processing go down because as organisations learns how to do things better, they become more efficient. Stated this way, the argument manipulates facts and conveys a distorted view of the situation. Reveals leaps of faith, but has poor reasoning and ill defined terminology. Fails to mention several key factors based on which it can be evaluated. The conclusion to this argument relies on several assumptions for which there is no clear evidence. Hence the argument is weak and has several flaws.
First, the argument assumes that any industry as it gains experience, optimizes its processing abilities and improves efficiency, thereby leading to lower cost. The author is convinced that over the years, like film processing industry, food processing industry would have engaged in certain improvements to reduce processing cost. The assumption does not has any support. For example, let us consider the amount of manual efforts involved in corresponding industry as a common parameter. Even today, major chunk of activities performed in food processing industry is labour intensive and has not been fully automated to achieve maximum efficiency. Whereas, there have been a lot of technological advancements made in the film processing industry to reduce manual activities, which was once considered labour intensive. This clearly proves that the author has a misconception. The argument could have been clearer if it had explicitly stated the advancements made in food processing industry to reduce manual efforts. This would help us to better evaluate the argument.
Second, the argument claims that, just like film processing industry, Olympic foods would also experience a reduction in processing cost as well as the processing time. This is again a weak and unsupported claim. The argument does not demonstrate any correlation between the processing parameters of the two industries in discussion. To illustrate this, we can consider the advancements made in the chemicals used in respective industries. Over the years, the food safety department has put in place numerous restrictions on the type of chemicals that can be used to process food, leading to lower shelf time of the food. This is not the case with film processing as there is no consumption. There has been no restriction over the type of chemicals that can be used in film processing. Newer chemicals aid faster processing of the films thereby reducing labour. The argument would have been more convincing if it had provided evidences that the chemicals used in food processing technology come at cheaper rate and enables higher shelf life.
Finally, we could further question about the availability of skilled labour who can adopt to the advancements made in food processing technology, technological advancements incorporated by Olympic foods, did the advancements made in the industry aid olympic foods to maintain a greater shelf life? Without any convincing answers to these questions, one can only have an impression that the claim of minimising cost and maximising profits is more of a wishful thinking rather than a substantiative evidence.
In conclusion, The argument is flawed because of the above mentioned reasons and is therefore unconvincing. It could be considerably strengthened if the author mentioned all the relevant facts. In order to assess the merits of a situation, it is essential to have a through knowledge of the contributing factors. This particular case, lacks such information. Without these informations, the argument remains to be unsubstantiated and open to debate.