Chapter 1

Chapter 1

THE FIELD OF ENGINEERING MANAGEMENTEngineers are expected to perform a variety of tasks depending on their specialization and joblevel. It is important to the engineer that he knows what is expected of him to perform his jobeffectively and efficiently. The next concern will be to identify the skills required which theengineer did not possess. As engineers, they are not directly trained to deal with people, it isexpected that their weakness will most often be on people-based skills. This difficulty will bemoiré apparent once they are assigned to occupy management positions. It follows that if theengineer manager would want to do his job well, some exposure to engineering managementactivities will be necessary.THE FUNCTIONS OF THE ENGINEER Even as engineers are currently producing solutions to many of the difficulties faced by mankind,much is still expected of them. Their outputs, new or improvements of old ones are very muchneeded in the following specific problem concerns:1.

the production of more food for a fast growing world population;2.

the elimination of air and water pollution3.

solid waste disposal and materials recycling;4.

the reduction of noise in various forms;5.

supplying the increasing demand for energy;6.

supplying the increasing demand for mobility;7.

preventing and solving crimes; and8.

meeting the increasing demand for communication facilities.Specifically, the functions of engineering encompass the following areas:1.

Research – where the engineer is engaged in the process of learning about nature andcodifying this knowledge into usable theories.2.

Design and development – where the engineer undertakes the activity of turning aproduct concept to a finished physical items.

Design for manufacturability and value engineering teams

(a feature of some companies) are charged with improvement of designs and specifications at the research, development, design, and productionstages of product...