Merits of Management engineering?

Engineering management

Ron Diftler (left), NASA Robonaut manager assisting in a Robonaut familiarization training session in the Space Environment Simulation Laboratory at NASA's Johnson Space Center.

Engineering management is a discipline of management in engineering fields.

Engineering management is a career that brings together the technological problem-solving savvy of engineering and the organizational, administrative, and planning abilities of management in order to oversee complex enterprises from conception to completion. A Master of Engineering Management (MEM) is sometimes compared to a Master of Business Administration (MBA) for professionals seeking a graduate degree as a qualifying credential for a career in engineering management.

Areas

Operations management, operations research, and supply chain management

Operations management is concerned with designing and controlling the process of production and redesigning business operations in the production of goods or services. Operations research deals with quantitative models of complex operations and uses these models to support decision-making in any sector of industry or public services. Supply chain management is the process of planning, implementing and managing the flow of goods, services and related information from the point of origin to the point of consumption.

Management of technology

The Management of Technology (MOT) theme builds on the foundation of management topics in accounting, finance, economics, organizational behavior and organizational design. Courses in this theme deal with operational and organizational issues related to managing innovation and technological change.

New product development and product engineering

New product development (NPD) is the complete process of bringing a new product to market. Product engineering refers to the process of designing and developing a device, assembly, or system such that it be produced as an item for sale through some production manufacturing process. Product engineering usually entails activity dealing with issues of cost, producibility, quality, performance, reliability, serviceability, intended lifespan and user features. Design for manufacturability (also sometimes known as design for manufacturing or DFM) is the general engineering art of designing products in such a way that they are easy to manufacture.

Systems engineering

Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design and manage complex systems over their life cycles.

Education

Engineering management programs typically include instruction in accounting, economics, finance, project management, systems engineering, mathematical modeling and optimization, management information systems, quality control & six sigma, operations management, operations research, human resources management, industrial psychology, safety and health.

There are many options for entering into engineering management, albeit that the foundation requirement is an engineering degree (or other computer science, mathematics or science degree) and a business degree.

Under graduate degrees

Although most engineering management programs are geared for graduate studies, there are a few elite institutions that teach EM at the undergraduate level. Some of the ones that are accredited and/or recognized by ASEM include: West Point (United States Military Academy), Norwich University, New York Institute of Technology, Stevens Institute of Technology, Illinois Institute of Technology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, George Washington University, Arizona State University, Missouri University of Science and Technology. Graduates of these programs regularly command nearly $65,000 their first year out of school.

Outside the USA, Istanbul Technical University Management Engineering Department offers an elite undergraduate degree in Management Engineering, attracting top students. The University of Waterloo offers a 4-year undergraduate degree (5 years including co-op education) in the field of Management Engineering. This is the first program of its kind in Canada. In Peru, Pacifico University offers a 5-year undergraduate degree in this field, the first program in this country.

Graduate degrees

Many universities offer Master of Engineering Management degrees. Missouri S&T is credited with awarding the first Ph.D. in Engineering Management in 1984. The National Institute of Industrial Engineering based in Mumbai has been awarding degrees in the field of Post Graduate Diploma in Industrial Engineering since 1973 and the Fellowship (Doctoral) degrees have been awarded since 2008. Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers a Master in System Design and Management, which is a member of the Consortium of Engineering Management.

Students in the University of Kansas' Engineering Management Program are practicing professionals employed by over 100 businesses, manufacturing, government or consulting firms. There are over 200 actively enrolled students in the program and approximately 500 alumni.

Istanbul Technical University Management Engineering Department offers a graduate degree, and a Ph.D. degree in Management Engineering.

According to the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) PRISM Magazine (March 2008) the largest Master's of Engineering Management (MEM) programs (in terms of degrees awarded for 2005 -2006) are shown in the following chart.

Largest MEM Programs.jpg

Consulting

As engineering firms are usually small partnerships, they cannot afford in-house management, therefore giving rise to the need for engineering management consultancy. It involves providing management consulting advice that is specific to engineering. Indifferent from the traditional focus of the, A T Kearney, Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey, science and engineering requires a particularly holistic approach involving art and science. There are many branches of engineering management consultancy (commerce), including law, accounting, human resources, marketing, politics, economics, finance, public affairs, and communication. Commonly, engineering management consultants are also used when firms require special technical knowledge, though many prefer to use engineering educational consultants for such a task, to upgrade organizational knowledge and in able to keep the intellectual property confidential. Though many firms opt to use traditional management consulting firms, many lack the know-how to tailor the traditional theories to accommodate professional engineers and other technical workers.

Engineering management consulting is concerned with the development, improvement, implementation and evaluation of integrated systems of people, money, knowledge, information, equipment, energy, materials and/or processes. Consultants strive to improve upon existing processes, products or systems. Engineering management consulting draws upon the principles and methods of engineering analysis and synthesis, as well as the mathematical, physical and social sciences together with the principles and methods of engineering design to specify, predict, and evaluate the results to be obtained from such systems or processes. Engineering management consulting puts a focus on the social impact of the product, process or system that is being analyzed.

Examples of where engineering management consulting might be used include designing new product development process, or an assembly workstation, strategizing for various operational logistics, consulting as an efficiency expert, developing a new financial algorithm or loan system for a bank, streamlining operation and emergency room location or usage in a hospital, planning complex distribution schemes for materials or products (referred to as Supply Chain Management), and shortening lines (or queues) at a bank, hospital, or a theme park. Management engineering consultants typically use computer simulation (especially discrete event simulation), along with extensive mathematical tools and modeling and computational methods for system analysis, evaluation, and optimization.

Professional organizations

There are a number of societies and organizations dedicated to the field of engineering management. One of the largest societies is a division of IEEE, the Engineering Management Society, which regularly publishes a trade magazine. Another prominent professional organization in the field is the American Society for Engineering Management (ASEM), which was founded in 1979 by a group of 20 engineering managers from industry.[14] ASEM currently certifies engineering managers (two levels) via the Associate Engineering Manager (AEM) or Professional Engineering Manager (PEM) certification exam. The Master of Engineering Management Programs Consortium is a newly formed consortium of prominent universities intended to raise the value and visibility of the MEM degree. Also, engineering management university programs have the possibility of being accredited by ABET, ATMAE, or ASEM. In Canada, the Canadian Society for Engineering Management (CSEM) is a constituent society of the Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC), Canada's oldest learned engineering society.