Productivity

Productivity means the balance between all factors of production that will give the greatest output for the smallest effort. This is quite different from productivity per worker or per hour of work.

The greatest opportunities for increasing productivity are to be found in knowledge work especially in mangement.

In the pre-industrial thinking, accountants called productive labor as mannual workers tending machines, who are actually the least productive labor. What they call non-productive labor are the people who contribute to production without tending to a machine.

The concept of productivity should consider together all the eforts that go into output and express them in relation to their result, rather than assuming that labor is the only productive effort. Effort should not be confined to the activities measureable as visible and direct costs.

Two factors that stand out but are never visible are:

1.Knowledge. This is the most productive and expensive resource.
2.Time. Time is man's most perishable resource. There is nothing less productive than idle time of expensive equipment or wasted time of highly paid and able people.