Industrial Engineering – Going’s Formulation

Industrial engineering directs the efficient conduct of manufacturing, construction, transportation, or even commercial enterprises of any undertaking, indeed in which human labor is directed to accomplishing any kind of work [1]. Industrial engineering has drawn upon mechanical engineering, upon economics, sociology, psychology, philosophy, accountancy, to fuse from these older sciences a distinct body of science of its own [2].

It is the inclusion of the economic and the human elements especially that differentiates industrial engineering from the older established branches of the profession [3].

The most important elements of industrial engineering are summed up in this alliterative list – machinery, materials, methods, management, men and markets. And these six elements are interpreted and construed by the aid of another factor whose name also begins with m – Money. Money supplies the gauge and the limit by which the other factors are all measured and adjusted [4].


1. Going, Charles Buxton, Principles of Industrial Engineering, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1911, Page 1
2. Op cit., Page 2
3. Op cit., Page 3
4. Op cit., Page 6