Industrial Engineering and Management - A Distinction

In the second edition of Maynard's Handbook of Industrial Engineering, Lyndall Urwick stated emphatically that industrial engineering is not synonymous with management. Management as a discipline, owes an immense debt to engineering, but industrial engineering is only part of the overall work of managing a business organization.

Engineering as a discipline is concerned with physical forces and physical underlying sciences.Engineering knowledge does not include knowledge of people. But industrial engineers design production systems which are to be operated by people. Hence industrial engineers must add human sciences, the biological and social, to his knowledge base. He must possess knowledge himself and on advanced issues he has to take the help of experts and act as a manager in case of differences of opinion among experts.


In Figure 1-2, Urwick identified four different groups of subjects that have a relation to management

I. Engineering and sciences
II. Human sciences at individual level - Physiology, Biology, Psychology, Medicine,Psychopathology
III. Decision sciences like Economics, Geography, Statistics, Accounting, Law
IV. Human sciences dealing with groups of people - Sociology, Anthropology, Political science, Public Administration

Reference

Lyndall F. Urwick, "Development of INdustrail Engineering," Chapter 1 Maynard, (Ed.) Industrial Engineering Handbook, H.B. Maynard, (Ed.), Second Edition