The New Management of Engineering

The first book that explains why managing engineering is more difficult, more demanding and more important than managing any other human activity in modern society. It explains how, by adhering to the principles taught by Peter F. Drucker in his landmark book "The Practice of Management", managers can exploit the full potentials of their peoples' talents and of changing technologies, methods and markets. It brings together the whole range of methods used by the world's best performing engineering companies, including research, design, development, testing, production and maintenance. The philosophy and methods for achieving excellence in quality and reliability are fully described. The book offers fresh insights into a wide range of current engineering management issues, including education, MBA training, quality and safety standards and the roles of institutions, cultures and governments in engineering.

Patrick O'Connor received his engineering training at the UK Royal Air Force Technical College. He served for 16 years in the RAF Engineer Branch, including tours on aircraft maintenance and in the Reliability and Maintainability office of the Ministry of Defence (Air). He joined British Aerospace Dynamics in 1975, and was appointed Reliability Manager in 1980. In March 1993 he joined British Rail Research as Reliability Manager. Since 1995 he has worked as an independent consultant on engineering management, reliability, quality and safety.

He is the author of "Practical Reliability Engineering", published by John Wiley (4th. edition 2002), "Test Engineering" (John Wiley 2001) and "The Practice of Engineering Management", (John Wiley 1994) (updated and re-published as "The New Management of Engineering" in 2005). He is also the author of the chapter on reliability and quality engineering in the Academic Press Encyclopaedia of Physical Science and Technology, and until 1999 was the UK editor of the Wiley journal "Quality and Reliability Engineering International". He has written many papers and articles on quality and reliability engineering and management, and he lectures at universities and at other venues on these subjects.

In 1984 he received the Allen Chop Award, presented by the American Society for Quality, for his contributions to reliability science and technology.