Editing Production

'''Production''', [[distribution]] and [[consumption]] are three phases of the [[product life cycle]] in conventional industrial economics.  These have been criticized for failing to include [[extraction]] and [[disposal]], and also the [[renewal]] of resource by [[nature's services]].

The [[Global Resource Bank]] tries to remove consumption from economics and work exclusively in terms of [[ecological yield]], i.e. production by [[nature's services]], and ignore consumption in the economic equations.  This is an extreme view that defies the [[supply and demand]] convention in typical economics.

When used in industrial context, production refers to the processing [[service]]s and changes in the material inputs that lead to a packaged "product".  In a [[service sector]] business, production and distribution are the same thing and consumption is immediate:  the [[power grid]] is a good example of this.  But a good many products are usually involved behind the scenes.  Breaking all of the services involved down into a single [[service economy]] model is very difficult.

Accordingly a [[production process]] is usually described only in terms of its:
*[[energy input]]
*[[water input]]
*other [[material input]]
*[[waste]] output including [[heat]]
*[[labour]] (or [[individual capital]] which is used up in the process)
*[[infrastructural capital]] which is worn down in the process
*[[financial capital]] invested which must yield some profit in return (though [[energy economics]] recommends looking at total [[energy profit]] instead, it is probably more of an issue in [[sustainability]] than short term performance)

The output is part of some [[supply chain]] to some other business, or is just consumed by some user.  [[Social capital]] which makes customers and workers and owners and suppliers all trust each other, [[instructional capital]] that tells them all what to do when, and the [[natural capital]] (damaged or converted in [[extraction]] and in [[disposal]]) are just ignored in typical economics.