Education in Engineering Management

HONGYI SUN
Dept of Manufacturing Engineering and Engineering Management City University of Hong Kong

RICHARD C. M. YAM
Dept of Manufacturing Engineering and Engineering Management City University of Hong Kong

PATRI K. VENUVINOD
Dept of Manufacturing Engineering and Engineering Management City University of Hong Kong

ABSTRACT
Engineering Management programs/courses are a recent development in response to the demand from industry. This paper demonstrates that Engineering Management is an independent field of education. Background, contents, and courses of Engineering Management are reviewed, analyzed, and discussed. The Master of Science (MSc) program in Engineering Management at City University of Hong Kong is used as an example for the purpose of discussion. The information in this paper will be of use as a reference for developing/reforming courses and curricula in Engineering Management.

Moreover, the managerial issues associated with computeraided technologies have not been sufficiently addressed by either modern engineering education or business/management education. It is only recently that Engineering Management education has been introduced in response to the demand from industry. According to a survey4, such programs are offered in the following five categories: Engineering Management Technology Management Manufacturing Management Industrial Management Innovation Management Of the above five categories, the two most commonly used are Engineering Management and Technology Management. Technology Management is mostly used by business schools while Engineering Management is widely used by engineering faculties. According to a survey of Engineering Management programs and Technology Management programs,4 there were around 200 Engineering Management and Technology Management education programs worldwide at the beginning of the 1990s. In 1997, Petersons Graduate Study Guide listed 120 engineering and technology programs at the graduate level in the US alone. Among these, 72 were Engineering Programs and 44 were Technology Management programs5. This paper will focus on Engineering Management offered by engineering faculties. Engineering Management has recently attracted the interests of researchers.4, 6, 7, 8 This paper will review, analyze and discuss the background and content of engineering education programs in engineering faculties.

I. INTRODUCTION
In the past ten to twenty years, manufacturing and engineering fields have undergone dramatic changes, for example, the emergence of international competitors and the invention and application of computer-based advanced technologies. These changes include the increased use of new technologies in the product itself, the design process, the manufacturing process, and the management process. As a result, product development cycles have been dramatically shortened, and the frequency of introduction of new technologies in product and process is higher than ever before. These technologies have an impact not only on operational aspects, as in the past, but also on strategic aspects. But while the changes provide strategic opportunities, they also introduce new managerial problems. It has been demonstrated that applying new technologies is not an easy process .1-3 A number of them turned out to perform unsatisfactorily. It appears, however, that the differences in performance lie less in the technology per se than in the way in which the technology and the process of introducing technology are managed. April 1999

II. REVIEW OF ENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT EDUCATION

At one stage, engineering education and management education were integrated. At the end of the 1880s in the United States, for example, management, especially Scientific Management, was an integral part of an engineering education.7 F.W. Taylor, known as the father of both Scientific Management and Industrial Engineering (IE), was an engineer himself. In fact, much of his management philosophy was formulated while he was trying to develop time study techniques (an activity at the very core of Industrial Engineering). In the 1940s, the British National Higher Education Certificate Program for Engineering Students included an Engineering Management course.9 However, during the second half of this century, there appeared a divergence between engineering education and management/business education. Engineering schools shifted to more scientific and technological issues. Industrial Engineering education began to focus on applied mathematics, especially Operations Research (OR). Management and people-oriented Journal of Engineering Education 181

courses were replaced by mathematical subjects like dynamic programming and stochastic modeling.7 In contrast, business/management education increasingly focused on marketing, accounting and human issues. In time, it appears that the very origins of the discipline of management had been forgotten. Since the beginning of the 1970s, there have been many debates about the status and future direction of Industrial Engineering as well as other engineering disciplines.10 These debates echoed the demand by industry for engineers with managerial skills. A 1973 survey in the US found that 72% of the members of American engineering societies who were 45 years old or more held a supervisory or management position.11 Another survey conducted by City University of Hong Kong12 in 1988 revealed a strong demand for Engineering Management professionals. In this survey, questionnaires were sent to about 3200 corporate members of the Hong Kong Institute of Industrial Engineers (HKIE). The response rate was 33.5%, and 55% of the respondents indicated that they would like to take advantage of a postgraduate course in Engineering Management. In October 1990, members of the Council on Industrial Engineering (CIE) and the Council of Industrial Engineering Academic Heads (CIEADH) met to discuss the current status and future curriculum of IE education.11 The participants, from both academia and industry, identified the problems with IE education and provided corresponding suggestions. Current IE curricula are often geared towards manufacturing and do not provide the background necessary for IEs to take managerial positions. Curricula need to provide the opportunity for engineering students to gain management skills, in addition to becoming technically competent. The survey participants suggested that IE curricula should include more marketing, finance, and communication skills to prepare IEs to assume greater responsibility, to achieve better balance between engineering and behavioral skills, and to aid students in developing teamwork, communication and assertiveness skills. Since then many industrial, manufacturing, and systems engineering departments have started to include Engineering Management courses and/or programs.7, 13 For example, City University of Hong Kong launched a postgraduate program in Engineering Management in 198912, which may be the first such program in Asia. The demand for this program continues to be very high; the application to admission ratio has been around 8:1 for several years. It has become one of the popular programs in Hong Kong. In the meantime, business education has also been criticized for being out of touch with the real world. In 1991, a survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit in the UK found that 35% of companies think that Master of Business Administration (MBA) programs are poorly designed. The MBA is seen as a high-status general management qualification, but it has been criticized for focusing too much on finance, marketing and accounting, at the expenses of in-depth examination of engineering- and technology-related issues.20, 21 Since the 1980s, the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), the accreditation body for business education, has included Production/Operations Management (POM) as one of the segments of a common body of knowledge required of all member schools. Many colleges and universities satisfy this requirement by including a POM course in their MBA curriculum. The need for more POM education is tied closely to the introduction of 182 Journal of Engineering Education

more technology. A survey of 22 business schools found that 32% of them include technology management in their POM curriculum/courses.22 Most POM textbooks contain one or two chapters on technology management [e.g., 23]. In summary, neither engineering nor management/business education has paid sufficient attention to engineering/technology management issues. The emergence of engineering/technology management as a field of education is of great importance in todays world. Since 1997, the US Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) has accredited engineering management programs.17

III. CONTENTS OF ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT

The content of engineering management programs today is very different from that of the early days. Robertsons 1948 book on engineering management,9 for example, was mainly about scientific management and production planning and control. Organizational, managerial and human resource issues were not included in early engineering management programs. Marketing, finance and communication skills were also not covered. This was because there were only courses, not complete degree programs, in those early days. That todays engineering management content is different is due to two reasons. First, from a technological perspective, computer-aided technologies have been widely adopted in manufacturing and other engineering functions. Obviously they are different from traditional manually operated technologies in terms of the degree of complexity and the amount of investment. Second, from a managerial perspective, traditional scientific management did not give sufficient consideration to human factors and contemporary management theories. Today, Engineering Management is defined as follows. Engineering Management is the discipline that addresses making and implementing decisions for strategic and operational leadership in current and emerging technologies and their impact on interrelated systems.16 Based on this definition, the empirical survey,12 and other literature14, 15, Engineering Management can be expected to cover the following topics: Management of engineering projects Management of the design process Personnel and communication skills for engineers Management of scientific methods for engineering Human resources for engineering Variation, quality, and reliability The ABET17 Engineering Criteria 2000 requires that: the Engineering Management curriculum must emphasize the application of the management function in the technological setting while recognizing the basic and applied sciences in engineering systems. Emphasis shall be placed on the engineering relationships between management tasks of organizing, staffing and the human element in production, research and service organizations.17

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VI. CURRICULUM FOR ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT EDUCATION

A curriculum in engineering management contains three sets of core courses. The first set of courses is general management courses such as accounting, finance, marketing, organizational behavior, and communication skills. The second includes engineering-related management courses (functional management courses) such as project management, product management, design management, quality management, maintenance management, supply-chain management, and logistics management. The third includes pure manufacturing and engineering related courses such as mechanical principles, manufacturing technologies, manufacturing technologies, design technologies, and manufacturing materials. The third set is only covered in the bachelor degree programs to give students a broad appreciation of technology. Postgraduate students are expected to have already acquired such appreciation through their studies of engineering at the undergraduate level and engineering work experience. Elective courses in both general management and engineering are available in most engineering management programs. According to a survey,4 more than half the engineering management programs are pursued at the Masters level, although shortterm courses, seminars and in-house-training, and bachelors-degree programs are also available. 18, 19 Business schools and engineering schools jointly establish and run most of the Masters programs. Since a Masters program normally requires a bachelors degree in engineering and technology, few compulsory courses in engineering (i.e., the third set) are offered in Masters programs. An example list of courses in general management and functional management is provided below. It is based on the Masters program in Engineering Management at City University of Hong Kong. The general management courses include: Accounting for Engineering Managers Management Concepts and Practice Quantitative Analysis for Engineering Management Organization and Behavior Management Production and Operations Management Principle of Marketing Finance Engineering Functional Management courses include: Project Management Quality Management Material Management Product Management Management of Technological Innovation Technology Assessment and Management Maintenance Management Supply Chain Management Communication Skills for Engineers The percentage of courses in general management and functional management varies from program to program. However, according to ABET17 Engineering 2000 Criteria, general management courses should not occupy more than three-quarters of the total courses in an engineering management program. If there are too many general management courses, the program tends to be a MBA program. In addition to courses, a dissertation or team-based project report will be supplementary to the two sets of courses learning. Other forms of learning such as workshops are also reported. April 1999

V. CONCLUSIONS
Due to technological and environmental changes and the demand by industry, engineering management education has grown rapidly in the past ten years. Many departments of industrial, manufacturing, and systems engineering have included engineering management courses/programs. Curricula for engineering management courses have been established. Most engineering management programs are at the Masters level and cover two sets of core courses, general managerial courses and engineering-related management courses. Admission to these programs requires a degree in engineering or another technical area and several years of working experience. Thus, contemporary changes in industry demand have resulted in the emergence and increase in engineering management education. From an academic point of view, engineering management programs include core courses that have not previously been emphasized either in traditional engineering education or in business education. Today, engineering management is acknowledged to be a field of education in its own right. Engineering management education has a rather short history. Although growing, engineering management programs are continuously being improved. Recently, practice-oriented Masters degree (POMD) programs have attracted the interests of industrial professionals.18 Teaching methods to provide students with more practical experience are in great need. The problem is that there are no laboratories for management. Simulation games for production and Engineering Management24 and project-based education25, 26 may be considered as a way to maintain a balance between theory and practice.

REFERENCES
1. Voss, C. A., Success and Failure in Advanced Manufacturing Technology, International Journal of Technology Management, vol. 3, no.3, 1988, pp. 285-297. 2. Noori, H. and R. W. Radford, Readings and Cases in the Management of New Technology, An Operations Perspective, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1990. 3. Bessant, J., Managing Advanced Manufacturing Technology Five Waves, NCC Blackwell, Oxford, UK, 1992. 4. Kacaoglu, D. F., Research and Education Characteristics of the Engineering Management, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, vol. 37, no. 3, 1990, p. 174. 5. Petersons Graduate Study Guide, 1997. 6. Ehmann, K. and P. C. Jones, Manufacturing Education: Masters Program and More, IEEE SPECTRUM Special Issue on Manufacturing la Carte, 1993, pp. 76-81. 7. Waters, R. C. Engineering Management Tradition and Education: Past, Present, and Future, Engineering Management Journal, vol. 6, no. 3, 1994, pp. 5-8. 8. Ip, W. H., An Integrated Curriculum for Engineering Management Education in Hong Kong and China, AEESEAP Journal of Engineering Education, vol. 26, no. 1&2, 1996, p. 3-7. 9. Robertson, S., Engineering Management, Blackie & Son Limited, London, 1948. 10. Fletcher, L. S., Mechanical Engineering Education for the 21st Century, International Journal of Engineering Education, vol. 13, no. 1, 1977, pp. 42-51.

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11. Babcock, D. L., Managing Engineering and Technology, Prentice Hall,Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1991. 12. Venuvinod, Patri K. and R.C.M,Yam, Development of the Master Degree Engineering Management Course in Hong Kong, Proceedings of the 1994 International Conference on Engineering Management, Melbourne, Australia, April 1994, pp. 291-294. 13. Ferguson, B. G., Developing a Curriculum for IE Graduates of Today and Tomorrow, Industrial Engineering, Nov. 1991, pp. 46-50. 14. Cleland, D., and D. F. Kocaoglu, Engineering Management, McGraw-Hill Book Company, NY, 1981. 15. OConnor, P. D., The Practice of Engineering Management: A New approach, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1994. 16. IEEE, Editorial: Research and Education Characteristics of the Engineering Management Discipline, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, vol. 37, no. 2, 1990, p. 1. 17. Engineering Criteria 2000: Criteria for Accrediting Programs in Engineering in the USA, Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, USA, 1997. 18. Merkel, K. G., Efficiently Linking Engineering Practice, Graduate Education, and Professional Development: The MBA, MEM, and POMD, IIE Solutions (Student IE Supplement): Fall 1995, pp. 23-26. 19. Whitefield, R.C. and R. V. M. Tummala, A BSc (Hons) Course in Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management for Hong Kong, AEESEAP Journal of Engineering Education, vol. 26, no.1&2, 1996, p. 13-26. 20. Hayes, R. H. and S. C. Wheelwright, Restoring our Competitive Edge: Competing through Manufacturing, Wiley, New York, 1984. 21. Engwall, L., The Viking Versus the World: An Examination of Nordic Business Research, Scandinavia Journal of Management, vol. 12, no.4, 1996, pp. 425-436. 22. Bahl, H. C., Teaching Production and Operations Management at the MBA level, Production and Inventory Management Journal, vol. 30, no. 3, 1989, pp. 5-7. 23. Chase, R. B. and N. Aquilano, Production and Operations Management, Irwin, Chicago, USA, 1997. 24. Riis, O. J., Simulation Games and Learning in Production Management, Chapman & Hall, London, 1995. 25. Kjersdam, F., Evaluation of Project-Organized Engineering Education, European Journal of Engineering Education, vol. 18, no.4, 1993, pp.15-27. 26. Kjersdam, F., The Aalborg Experiment - Project Innovation in University Education, Aalborg University, Denmark, 1994.

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