The practice of engineering management

Managing engineering is more difficult, more demanding, and more important than managing any other human activity in modern society. In this book, Patrick O'Connor explains how the principles of modern management, pioneered by Peter Drucker, relate to the human and scientific aspects of engineering. He shows how today's engineering manager can exploit the full potentials of changing technologies, methods and markets. He offers fresh, and often controversial, insights into a wide range of current engineering management issues, in design, development, production and use, always maintaining the importance of leadership and development of people as individuals and as teams. The roles of education, training and research, the value of MBA training, the effectiveness of quality standards, the problems of diversification from military to commercial markets, and the roles of institutions, cultures and governments in engineering are included in the range of topics explored.