Arthur Dehon Little was an American chemist and chemical engineer who discovered the first acetate fiber. In 1886, he founded Arthur D. Little, the first management consulting services firm. The firm pioneered the concept of contracted professional services. Its slogan in 1907 was “Other peoples’ troubles are our business.”
Little was instrumental in developing chemical engineering at MIT; he is credited with introducing the term “unit operations” to chemical engineering. Little was a member of Research Corporation’s founding Board of Directors, and served from 1912 until 1921.
Little’s Unit Operations Concept suggests that by systematically studying the operations involved in the chemical industry, the treatment of all processes is unified and simplified. Unit operations are employed mainly in preparing the reactants, separating and purifying the products, recycling unconverted reactants, and controlling the energy transfer into or out of the chemical reactors. The design of the equipment involved for these operations is also studied in unit operations. The concept is used for organizing much of the subject matter of chemical engineering and is considered the “core” of chemical engineering.
In 2002, Arthur D. Little was acquired by the French company Altran Technologies. Today, the company concentrates on oil and gas, telecommunications, automotive, chemicals, and public sector consulting.