Managing Engineering and Technology (3rd Edition) - Hardcover

Babcock, Dan; Morse, Lucy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0130619787 ISBN 13: 9780130619785

Publisher: Prentice Hall, 2001

Synopsis

Managing Engineering and Technology is designed to teach engineers, scientists, and other technologists the management skills they will need to be effective throughout their careers. Chapter topics cover engineering and management, the historical development of engineering management, planning and forecasting, decision making, organizing, some human aspects of organization, motivating and leading technical people, controlling, managing the research function, managing engineering design, planning production activity, managing production operations, engineers in marketing and service activities, project planning and acquisition, achieving effectiveness as an engineer, managerial and international opportunities for engineers, and special topics in engineering management. For technical professionals of many kinds.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Engineering management faculty have recognized Managing Engineering and Technology as one of the best textbooks in its field. This book is designed to teach engineers, scientists, and other technologists the management skills they will. need to be effective throughout their careers. Topical coverage includes:

• The nature and application of management principles throughout the technology product/project life cycles.
• The many dimensions and issues involved with developing an engineering management career, such as getting off to the right start, maintaining technical competence, making the transition to management positions, international implications, ethics, and women/minorities.
• Traditional management functions of planning, organizing, motivating, and controlling with an emphasis on the management of technology

The third edition has been completely updated with additional information on concurrent engineering, teams, the Internet, information technology, and creativity.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Preface to the Third Edition

Engineering management faculty have recognized Managing Engineering and Technology as one of the best textbooks of its type. I have been honored by Dan Babcock and Prentice Hall to do the revision and update of this textbook.

The outline of the text has provided me with an excellent foundation upon which to make my revisions. The updating of graphs, tables, making current many of the references and providing additional insights based on emerging engineering and management thinking encompasses many of the revisions in this third edition. Finally, the creation of a dedicated website, which will include Microsoft PowerPoint slides for each chapter and additional references (for both web and print sources) to support the material of each chapter, will further add to this edition. The web site may be found at

prenhall/babcock_morse

Lucy C. MORSE, PH.D.
Orlando, Florida Preface to the Second Edition

For 20 years after I began teaching engineering in 1970 I searched for a textbook to use in teaching management principles to young engineers, both upper-level undergraduates and young professionals in graduate-degree programs or noncredit courses. Certainly there was (and is) no shortage of excellent introductory textbooks in business management. I had several shelves full—generally well written, printed attractively in multiple colors, and accompanied by stacks of supplemental instructors' aids. However, I had been looking for something different—a book that would help introduce the engineer and applied scientist to the ways in which management principles are applied in the kinds of work they are most likely to encounter. And I'd found that young engineering and science students and beginning technical professionals have little understanding of the environment and the profession they are entering. For a limited group of engineers there were solutions. There were several books on construction management suitable for civil engineers interested in that area of engineering practice. For manufacturing engineers, or for mechanical engineers interested in manufacturing, there were several suitable books on manufacturing management. And a variety of books on project management were available for use in credit and noncredit classes and personal study in t1lis area. Finally, there were several books on various aspects of engineering management, but none seemed to have the breadth and content I was looking for.

In the late 1980s, I began to prepare handout materials that supplemented the management textbook I was then using. I incorporated them into an outline of the book I really wished were available. Prentice Hall liked the outline, so I fleshed it out, and the first edition, appearing in late 1990, was the result. I've been pleased by the reception the book received from my colleagues in engineering management education and related fields. It was adopted for use in more than 50 U.S. institutions, well as several in other countries (especially in Australia).

However, we live in a fast-moving world. American industry, portrayed in the first edition as being in serious difficulty, is now much more competitive worldwide. Our better companies have been "reengineered" by reducing layers of middle management, motivating and empowering employee teams to continually improve quality and productivity, emphasizing customer satisfaction, and eliminating activities that are not essential. New methods and tools such as concurrent engineering, strategic management of technology, activity-based costing, and total productive maintenance have seen increasing use. International trade is increasing in the era of NAFTA, the expansion of GATT, and the collapse of the Soviet empire. These considerations, plus updating of statistical information and increasing end-of-chapter discussion questions, have been incorporated into this second edition.

As in the first edition, I begin this book with a chapter on the profession of engineering, the art and science of management, and their integration. This is followed by a chapter on the history of management from the engineer's perspective. Chapters 3 through 8 concern themselves with the management functions of planning, organizing, motivating, and controlling as they might appear in a more conventional management text, but somewhat condensed and written with an emphasis on the management of technology. The next chapters then apply these basics of management to the working environments the engineer is most likely to see, organized into chapters on research, design, production, and technical sales and service. Then two chapters on project management treat the application of management principles to this common type of engineering practice. Chapters 16 and 17 consider the early development of the engineer-in getting off to the right start, maintaining technical competence, and considering the transition to management. Chapter 18 closes with supporting topics of interest to the engineer-the position of women and minorities in engineering, using time effectively, and the importance of professional ethics.

Instructors adopting this book may wish to tailor the content to their specific needs. For industrial and manufacturing engineering classes, Chapters 11 and 12 may be redundant to similar material covered in more detail in other classes. Chapter 16, dealing with the beginning of the engineering career, may be unnecessary for graduate classes of practicing engineers. Discussion questions at the end of each chapter include some that ask working engineers for application of chapter content to their own professional experience, and others more appropriate to undergraduates. Adopters have confirmed my experience that the book has more than enough breadth of material, even when selectively pruned in this manner, for use in a 45-contact-hour, 3-semester-hour program.

Suggestions for improvement or identification of errors are welcome.

DANIEL L. BABCOCK, PH.D., P.E.
Rolla, Missouri

Edition details

• Publisher: Prentice Hall
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0130619787
• ISBN 13: 9780130619785
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 490