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(Part 1) Introduction To Management Challenges For Engineers

The document discusses the challenges engineers face in management roles, including responsibilities like achieving objectives, making strategic decisions, and guiding teams. It covers the types of work managers do, such as planning, organizing and controlling resources, and differentiates between products and services industries. Major sectors for employment are identified as manufacturing is declining while services make up to 80% of jobs in countries like the US.

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86 views23 pages

(Part 1) Introduction To Management Challenges For Engineers

The document discusses the challenges engineers face in management roles, including responsibilities like achieving objectives, making strategic decisions, and guiding teams. It covers the types of work managers do, such as planning, organizing and controlling resources, and differentiates between products and services industries. Major sectors for employment are identified as manufacturing is declining while services make up to 80% of jobs in countries like the US.

Uploaded by

fsamputo
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Introduction to Management

Challenges for Engineers


Subject: BEC 311 - Engineering management
Instructor: Engr. Bon Renann E. Ceniza, MSc
1. Introduction
• In our modern-day economy, customers’ needs are changing
rapidly, the marketplace is becoming global, and technology is
advancing at an ever-increasing speed.
• To maintain competitiveness in such a challenging environment,
companies need effective leaders who understand both technology
and business.
• Engineers with proper management training have great
opportunities to make valuable and lasting contributions (Chang
2005; Merino and Farr 2010).
1. Introduction
• In industry, managers are select employees entrusted with the
responsibilities of putting communications means to use, making
critical decisions, taking decisive actions, applying resources, and
guiding the behavior of internal teams and external business
partners to achieve company objectives (Shah 2012; Gomez 2014).
1. Introduction
• The communications means applied by managers may be verbal or
written, with or without body language.
• The decisions made take into account technical feasibility,
resources conservation, and economic viability. The actions taken
include planning, organizing, leading, and controlling.
1. Introduction
• The resources utilized involve people, time, capital, equipment,
facilities, technology, know-how, and business relationships.
• The teams guided by managers are individual employees (teams of
one), projects, task forces, quality circles, and others.
• The external business partners may include customers, suppliers,
networked partners, and joint ventures or otherwise aligned
companies.
2. Definition
2.1. Management Responsibilities
2.2. Type of Work
2.3. Chain of Command
2.4. Principle of Unity of Command
2.5. Efficiency
2.6. Effectiveness
2.7. Strategic and Operational (Tactical) Decisions
2.1. Management Responsibilities
• The management group of a company has the overall responsibility
of achieving the company’s objectives and meeting the diverse
expectations of its stakeholders.
• The management group is composed of managers at various levels,
from chief executive officer (CEO) down to first-line managers (e.g.,
supervisor, group leader, section head, and manager).
2.1. Management Responsibilities
• The stakeholders are groups of people who have a stake in the
company’s performance. These include shareholders, customers,
suppliers, employees, and the community in which the company
operates. Typical expectations of these stakeholders include:

• Shareholders: Return on investment, dividends, earnings per share, and


appreciation in stock price over time

• Customers: Quality of products, acceptable services, flexibility of


company to accommodate changing customer needs, efficient delivery, and
competitive prices
2.1. Management Responsibilities
• Suppliers: Financial stability, market share position, quality production,
collaboration efficiency, and on-time payment

• Employees: Innovative company policy and culture, good working


conditions, stable employment, and competitive salary and benefits

• Community: Environmentally clean, tax contribution, socially responsible,


ethically acceptable practices, and good corporate citizenship
2.2. Types of Work
• Work is the task performed to add value to the company.
Performing the work involves the use of resources (e.g., time,
money, energy, tools, human efforts, technologies, and facilities)
and applicable procedures. There are three types of work:

• Management work: Plan, organize, lead, and control the efforts of self and
others; this requires thinking.

• Technical work: Specialized, nonmanagement work done by engineering


managers if others cannot do it for them; this requires doing.

• Operating work: Management and technical work that has been delegated
to others; this requires monitoring and controlling.
2.3. Chain of Command
• Refers to the chain of direct authority relationships between
superiors and subordinates. This is derived from the traditional
military systems.
2.4. Principle of Unity of Command
• An individual worker reports to a single superior.
2.5. Efficiency
• Refers to the accomplishment of a given task with the least amount
of effort. Being efficient means not wasting resources (e.g., time,
money, equipment, facilities, skills, talents, and management attention).
2.6. Effectiveness
• Refers to the accomplishment of a given task with the least amount
of effort. Being efficient means not wasting resources (e.g., time,
money, equipment, facilities, skills, talents, and management attention).
2.7. Strategic and Operational (Tactical)
Decisions
• Strategic decisions are those that set the direction for the unit,
department, and company.
• These decisions determine what are the right things to do.
Examples include which new markets to pursue, what new
products to develop, who should be engaged as supply chain
partners, and when the right time is to acquire which new
technologies to enhance competitive advantages.
• Operational decisions are those that specify ways to implement a
specific task, project, or program. They define how things are to be
done correctly.
3. Employment Trend in Industries
• Graduates are typically employed in for-profit industrial
companies, which design, produce, market, and service products or
services or both to their business clients or individual consumers in
the marketplace.
• The differences between products and services, the major trend
regarding employment into the future, and the special skills needed
for graduates to be successful in the years ahead.
3.1. Products versus Services
• Products differ from services in a number of ways. According to
Tidd and Bessant (2013), there are six characteristics that could be
used to differentiate them:

▪ Tangibility: Products are more tangible than services.


▪ Perceptions: Product quality is assessed based on criteria such as
functionality, reliability, durability, and maintainability. Service quality is,
on the other hand, perceived based on physical evidence (the physical
setting where the service is offered), responsiveness (speed of service and
willingness of staff to help), competence (ability to perform the service
dependably), assurance (knowledge and courtesy of staff and ability to
convey trust and confidence), and empathy (provision of caring and
individual attention).
3.1. Products versus Services
▪ Simultaneity: Products are typically made in advance of consumption,
whereas services are consumed mostly at the time of production.
Simultaneity brings about the potential for quality management problems
related to the identification and correction of service errors as well as
capacity-planning problems to match supply with demand.

▪ Storage: Capacity-management problems may arise due to an imbalance


between supply and demand. Such problems may be mitigated by pricing
(e.g., discounts at off-peak time to induce demand), adding temporary
workers or outsourcing or both.
3.1. Products versus Services
▪ Customer contact: Services demand a high level of customer contact,
some more (medical, business consulting) and some less (financial service,
information), whereas products are typically sold in the absence of much
customer interaction.

▪ Location: The proximity factor is more important for services than for
products, making services more local and less competitive. Only about 10%
of services in the developed economies are traded internationally.
3.2. Major Sectors in Industry
• The economies of many countries consist of three major sectors:
agriculture, manufacturing, and services.
• The agriculture and manufacturing sectors generate products for
sales, whereas the service sector offers services to business clients
or individual consumers or both.
• Over the years, significant changes have occurred in each of these
sectors due to technological advancement, market expansion, rapid
change in customer needs, and globalization.
• In countries, such as the United States, the service-providing
industry could make up as high as 80% of the total employment in
the year of 2014, whereas the roles of the agriculture and
manufacturing sectors are steadily declining over time.
Fig. 1. U.S. Employment trend (1850-2010)
Table 1 Global Demographics
3.2. Major Sectors in Industry
• The service-providing industry is typically divided into a large
number of sectors, as follows:
1. Professional and business services
2. Health care and social assistance
3. State and local governments
4. Leisure and hospitality
5. Educational services
6. Retail trades
7. Financial services
8. Transportation and warehousing
9. Information
10. Utilities

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