Question

You are the purchasing manager for a large jewellery manufacturer. The company’s president sent you abroad to find new suppliers of base metals, including brass, copper, nickel, and aluminum. You were asked to evaluate each supplier based on the quality, availability, and cost of its products. You have just returned from a 12-day trip to suppliers in Cambodia, China, South Korea, and the United Arab Emirates. You will present your findings and recommendations to the company’s senior executives, but you’re not sure how best to organise your speech.

Your major choices are chronological order, problem-solution order, and topical order. What might be the main points of your speech with each of these methods of organization? Explain which method you think would be most effective for your presentation.

Answer 1

Organizing the speech on new suppliers for base metals in a topical order would provide clear comparisons based on quality, availability, and cost, and align with the company's needs for each metal.

Step-by-step explanation:

When organizing a speech for presenting findings on new suppliers of base metals such as brass, copper, nickel, and aluminum, one could employ different organizational patterns: chronological order, problem-solution order, or topical order.

Chronological Order

• Start by detailing the trip's itinerary, mentioning each country and the suppliers visited in succession.
• Discuss observations about supplier quality, availability, and cost, as encountered in order of the visits.
• Conclude with overall impressions that built up over the course of the trip.

Problem-Solution Order

• Begin by outlining the challenges faced with current suppliers.
• Present the findings as potential solutions to these problems.
• End with recommendations for which supplier solutions best address the identified issues.

Topical Order

• Divide the speech into sections based on each metal type.
• Within each section, evaluate the suppliers according to quality, availability, and cost.
• Provide a recommendation for each type of metal, rather than each supplier.

The most effective method for this presentation would likely be the topical order, as it allows for a clear comparison between suppliers based on specific criteria across different locations, and can directly align with the company's needs for each base metal. This also prevents information overload that could come from a strictly chronological approach and is more structured than a problem-solution presentation which might be better suited for addressing one specific issue rather than multiple supplier evaluations.