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A Management Improvement Program

Department of Dairy and Animal Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

ABSTRACT

Need for improved management. During the past 20 yr. survival in the business world has been the result of intelligent use of management resources. Competition from outside and within the dairy industry, together with rising costs, has narrowed the margin available to the dealer. Large firms have employed services of professional management consultants. We can also observe that even our farmers have available to them the services of specialists in their kind of business—farm management—through our Extension Service.

This leads me to the next observation, that our dairy industry is comprised of a large number of family enterprises, most of them thoroughly familiar with their product and the machinery for processing it, but quite unskilled in managing the total business of the firm. They are, therefore, well informed on technology because of 4-yr., 2-yr., and short course programs of instruction at our land-grant colleges. If you are anticipating that my next statement will be one of criticism of such programs of instruction for minimizing management, you are wrong, because it has always been my feeling that management cannot be taught effectively unless one is acitvely engaged in it, and then it must be treated separately from processing functions.