How to Enter The Productivity Field--Especially for An Ecologist

[fritzr1950@hotmail.com]

Recently I sent an e-mail asking whether an operation could raise productivity, cut cost per unit, and cut ecologic damage—all at the same time.

>From your answers, it appears so. 

I was asking on behalf of a young ecologist in a Yale master’s program. Her focus is industrial ecology. (The thought there is to encourage sustainable economic development via careful use of resources. Clean air, clean water, and less waste are thought to be necessary outcomes of such development.)
 
Simply telling polluting factory owners not to pollute will likely not work and raise walls. Factory owners, trying to make a profit, believe that cutting pollution raises costs. Their focus is on productivity and production cost problems are their focus. (They assume marketing will place their output). Being responsible for clean environment makes problems for them—so they believe. As a result they prefer thinking of other things they understand.

It seems she would more likely be heeded and possibly even welcomed by focusing first on factory owners’ problems. If she could first help factory owners raise productivity and cut production costs while cutting pollution, chances of their taking her as a serious thinker increase. Admittedly a Trojan horse approach, but when all gain it’s a benign Trojan horse.

How and where can she gain the understanding that DEN practitioners use? Most DEN practitioners seem engineers or possibly statisticians. She is neither. Her BA is in environmental science. 

Is business school the answer? If so, which one(s)? Few business schools now focus on production and productivity. Yale offers nothing like the Deming approach. Its business school’s highly theoretic focus is non-profit and governmental.  

Do any training courses or schools in Europe, Canada, the US, or Australia teach productivity using the Deming approach? 

My thought is she should learn to solve productivity problems, enter productivity consulting and then apply environmental common sense. 

How and where would she start on such a path? (My field is investments.) Any thoughts?

/s/ Max Roberts


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