Wicked Widget Company

The president of the Wicked Widget Company argues that his company will sustain its profitability next year because of its best workers retaining their jobs. This is because it has decided to save money by paying its employees on the basis of widget produced as opposed to on hourly basis. The company believes that by doing so, it will enhance efficiency and quality of the produced widgets.  Additionally the president argues that this will save in management costs and electricity because the efficiency attained will help retain the best workers and reduce the weekly time spent on factory floor operation.  This argument is not well reasoned because this practice will not automatically result to savings because the employees can produce more widgets in an hour and their wages will remain constant even if the widgets are very many as opposed to paying them for every widget as it can inflate their wages to a large extent if they manufacture many of them.

To begin with, the president argues that the policy will enhance the terms of efficiency by reducing the costs incurred by the company and the minutes spend by employees on widgets. He goes ahead to explain how it will improve the quality of the widgets because payment will only be made on the accepted widgets. This reasoning is not valid because the likely situation is that employees will want to produce more widgets to earn more money compromising their quality. Only few widgets will be accepted to generate less income for the company. To validate this statement, it has to be assumed that most widgets produced will meet the standards of Widget Inspection Team. This assumption will strengthen his argument by maximizing profits from quality widgets.

Another flaw in the president’s reasoning is that paying employees basing on the widgets produced will increase efficiency.  This he feels, will be realized due to reduced company’s costs and increased widget quality. This can not happen without an appropriate assumption being made to validate it. The assumption is that reduced employee minutes per widget will enhance efficiency, therefore ensuring that even if they produce many of them within a short time, their quality will no be compromised. This point of view/assumption will strengthen the point because even if the number of widgets produced will be more, their quality will not be questionable.

The last flaw in his argument is that benefits from efficiency will enable the company keep only the best employees and manage the factory floor for less time weekly hence savings in management costs and electricity. This is not obvious because it is not keeping a small number of employees will not routinely result in to efficiency at the company but other management factors have to be appropriately organized to achieve this. Therefore an assumption to be made has to be only if all other factors are effectively managed to run the company well. This point serves as strength to the argument because there are a number of other issues which affect cost effectiveness of personnel.

In conclusion, the president’s argument was questionable because some of the reasons he brought forth as means through which his company will retain the best employees and improve its profitability are not valid. To begin with paying employees on the basis of widgets produced can slower their rate of production or increase the rate of wages all together. Secondly the celebrated efficiency gains may not be realized as fewer employees are not a guarantee of enhancing quality production. Lastly, the projected savings in management costs and electricity as some other factors need to be implemented for this to be realized. The president’s argument can be improved by carefully looking at and considering all the factors that affect efficiency in production.