There were several recent articles in the Journal of Human Lactation on this topic by Daly and Hartmann, and Hartmann's talk from ILCA 1990 is still available on tape. A good lactation consultant usually can readily fix these problems. I don't hesitate to recommend pumps because I see so many babies with poor suck responses at first. The poor suck leaves milk in the breast, which compromises milk supply, resulting in a hungry disorganized baby and no milk. At least with a good pumping routine, we have plenty of mom's milk to work with while we figure out how to help the baby feed better.
Supply is usually the easiest part to fix.
I wanted it to be a springboard to learning more about the subject, and to serve as a catalyst for your own thoughts on how to better explain this to others. Milk synthesis is a very complex process. People get PhD's studying it and researching the mechanisms involved. When I teach or lecture on this subject, it's a 2-hour talk with 45 overheads, and I'm still gathering material. I keep a big folder of my notes, original research articles, page notations from texts, etc.