Origins Of Engineering & Beginning of Engineering Education

Beginning of Engineering Education

People who organized construction of the Great Pyramid, 5000 years ago, richly deserves to be called an engineer. (or ancient engineer). But the term has only been in general use for 200 years; -- since universities began training people to build things. First engineer workshops were done in armies. By the mid-1600s, artillery and fortifications had grown so complex that armies began training officers in math and mechanics. That gradually turned into civil engineering. In 1775, King Louis XV of France authorized Jean Perronet to set up a School of Bridges and Highways with a three-year program.

However most importent development in engineering are industrial revolutian and steem engines and after these many types of engineering appeared. Then,universities began to give engineering education to their students.The first schools of engineering was founded in France, in the middle of 18th century. Engineering education also began in America after Lawrence Grayson's history of engineering education.

Origins Of Engineering

In prehistoric times, men and women had to be ingenious in order to survive hunger, enemies, climate and, later, the tyrrany of distance. So there have always been 'engineers' around, many of whom were involved in activities we would not associate with engineering today but, rather, with hunting, farming, fishing, fighting, implement- and tool-making, transportation and many other things.

From around 3000 BC, the pace of development quickened. After simple tools came the development of wedges, wheels and levers, the use of animals to carry and draw loads and of fire to work metals, the digging of irrigation canals, and open-pit mining. Geographically, these and many other developments took place in and around the Mediterranean, in the Middle East and in Asia Minor. Pyramids were erected in the Nile Valley.

The Greeks - the inventors - made significant contributions in the 1000 years that straddled the BC-AD divide. They produced the screw, the ratchet, the water wheel and the aeolipile, better known as Hero's turbine. The Romans - the improvers and adapters - did likewise, building fortifications, roads, aqueducts, water distribution systems and public buildings across the territories and cities they controlled. At the other end of the world, the Chinese have been credited with the development of the wheelbarrow, the rotary fan, the sternpost rudder that guided their bamboo rafts and, later, their junks. They also began making paper from vegetable fibres - and gunpowder.

Sources:

http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1107.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering#History

http://www.new-sng.com/history.cfm

What Engineers Do?

Engineers are concerned with the creation of structures , devices, and systems for human use. They are also problem solvers (Especially Industrial Engineers). Their work is often the link between a scientific discovery and its application. Many engineers develop new products. During this process, they consider several factors. For example, in developing an industrial robot, engineers precisely specify the functional requirements; design and test the robot's components; integrate the components to produce the final design; and evaluate the design's overall effectiveness, cost, reliability, and safety. This process applies to the development of many different products, such as chemicals, computers, power plants, helicopters, and toys.

Types Of Engineers

=====>Electric&Electronic Engineering

This branches of engineering is the largest one of all. Electric engineering is concerned with electrical devices, currents and systems. It also deals with the study and application of , electricity electronics and electromagnetisim.

=====>Mechanical Engineering

It is one of the largest areas of engineering activity. In some cases it is called “medicine of engineering.” Mechanical engineers concern with machinery power and manufacturing or production.

=====>Civil Engineering

Civil engineering concerns with the design, construction and maintenance of the physical and natural built environment containing buildings we live the transportation facilities we use the water we drink, and the drainage and sewerage systems that are necessary to our health and well-being.

=====>Chemical Engineering

Chemical Engineering involves the application of the chemistry, physics and engineering to the design and operation of plants for the production of materials that undergo chemical changes during the manufacture.

=====>Industrial Engineering

Industrial Engineers are concerned with the design, improvement and installation of integrated systems of people, material and energy ,in the production of either goods or devices.

Industrial engineering is also known as , system engineering, production engineering, operation s management, manufacturing engineering or manufacturing systems engineering.

Whereas most engineering disciplines apply skills to very specific areas, industrial engineering is applied in virtually every industry. Industrial Engineering is at the heart of the systems that are essential to our society. From airlines to online retailers, from hospitals to manufacturers, from telecommunication companies to world-wide shipping companies, industrial engineers design solutions to improve the performance of complex systems of people, technology, and information.

Industrial engineers perform time and motion studies of workers, set standards of work performance, and propose new improved work methods to increase productivity.

=====>Aerospace Engineering

Aerospace Engineering is concerned with all aspects of vehicular flight at all speeds and altitudes. It covers all phases of research, design, and development in this broad area.

=====>Agricultural Engineering

Agricultural Engineering Associates was formed to fill the void for technical engineering services at the production of agriculture grassroots.

=====>Material Engineering

The term material engineering refers in a general way to a group of engineering specializied that are concerned with the development, production, fabrication, and use of materials in specific technologies.

=====>Textile Engineering

Textile engineers deal with the planning design and operation of the manufacturing plants in the textiles industry.

=====>Environmental Engineering

Environmental engineering deals with air pollution control, industrial hygiene, radiation protection, hazardous waste management, toxic materials control, water supply, waste water management, storm water management, solid waste disposal, public health, and land management.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_engineering

http://industrialengineering.dal.ca/

http://www.aaee.net/Website/Careers

Introduction to Engineering by Paul Wright

Engineering As a Profession

In order to use the materials and forces of nature for the benefit of people, engineering applies the knowledge of mathematics and natural sciences with discretion and judgment as a profession.

It differs from other professions in several ways:

In the type of service provided, in the training requirements for its practitioners, in the diversity of its leadership, and in the lack of uniformity, and rigidity in its registration laws.

In contrast to other professions engineering tend to create machines, structures, processes and other products for the use of group of people; not individually.

Although it differs significantly from other types of professions in several aspects, engineering possesses those attributes that characterize a profession;

• It satisfies an priceless and beneficial need.

• It requires the exercise of foresight and judgment and is not subject to normalization.

• It contains a type of activity that is conducted on a high intellectual plane based on knowledge and skills which are not commonly have by the general society.

• It has group consciousness for the promotion of knowledge and professional and rendering social services.

• It has a legal status and requires well-formulated standards of permission

Sourcess:
Introduction to engineering-by Paul H. Wright
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering

My Preference

If I were one of these VIP’s, I would like to be Frank Bunker Gilbreth. There are several reasons for this choice. First of all, he was a good father and a husband; although he had twelve children, he could be a very good father for all of his children. He could share time with his children even if he had very much work to do. Secondly, he was a good explorer and engineer although he did not graduate from a college. He worked on efficiency and tried to improve the work done per unit very beneficially. He did not forget that his work area contains “human factor”. The progress that he did in work place did not force workers to work harder or work much time. On the contrary his works of efficiency improved the conditions of employees. At this point, F.B.Gilbreth differs from Frederic Taylor, Henry Ford and Henri Fayol.

Maximillian Carl Emil Weber(1864-1920)

Maximillian Carl Emil Weber who was born in 1864 in Germany was considered by many to be the father of sociology. He was also a political economist. According to Max Weber sociology is a science that is concerned with a social action and the course and/or consequences of the action. In addition to sociology econmoy and politics, he touched on religion. It can be said that his most precious work is the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In this case, in many aspects of social economy, he disagreed with Karl Marx who was the father of Communism. Weber states that "economics is not a science of nature and its qualities, but of people and their needs". One can say about Weber's theory of social economics that, it helps to construct a dialogue between economists and sociologists.

In Weber’s Sociology there are four major types of social action; which are;

v Men may engage in purposeful or goal-oriented rational action.

v Men’s rational action may be value-oriented.

v Men may act from emotional or affective motivations

v Men may engage in traditional action.

Sources:

http://www.6sociologists.20m.com/weber.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber#Sociology_of_religion

http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/profiles/weber.htm

Capitalism and modern social theory - an anaysis of the writings of Marx, Durkheim and Max Weber. Anthony Gıddens -Cambridge University Press-

Lilian Moller Gilbreth(1978-1972) & Frank Bunker Gilbreth(1868-1924)

Lillian Moller Gilbreth

was the industrial & organizational psychologist who was also working as a first woman engineer holding a PhD. Lillian and Frank were true partners from the beginning. Her husband Frank B. Gilbreth was a businessman and Lillian was a industrial psychologist. This enabled the couple work in harmony, and made big successes in workplace. They both became passionate about finding the "one best way" to perform any task in order to increase efficiency and productivity in industry. For Frank Gilbreth, efficiency is the most basic thing in the workplace. He was not an educated person whereas he was passionate about doing his job in best way, and even in his work time he was thinking about how to improve quality of the work he was doing. He had a constructor company an he was asking both himself and the people around him to develop efficiency of labors. As a result of his thoughts and experiments he could improve the effectiveness of a worker 200% than before. Moreover, in this case, the workers were not doing much hard work or not working for much time. In deed, they were doing their job in the most effective way and in the most effective conditions. Mr. Gilbreth for years has closely wached workers at tasks of all kinds; he has discovered how much they lose by maving unprofitably hither and thither, by neglecting to take the shortest and easiest paths.

F.B.Gilbreth also worked on many scientific management issues such as:

Field System, Concrete System, Bricklaying System, Motion Study, Primer of Scientific Management, The Psychology of Management (with his wife Lillian Gilbreth), and Fatigue Study.

Gilbreth’s studies on industrial engineering mostly affected from Taylor’s ideas. However, Taylor’s studies mostly focused on mechanical systems and mechanical workshops, whereas Gilbreth’s main study areas were building, medicine, education, defence sectors in all of which there was a human factor. In this case, psychologist Mrs. Gilbreth helped his husband in many case.

After F.Gilbreth’s dead Hİs wife Moller Gilbreth tried to continue his husbands jobs, but she could not be so successful. On the other hand, she was one of the consultants of presidents Kennedy, Eishenhower, Roosevelt and Hover.

In 1946 their children Frank Jr. Gilbreth and Ernestie Gilbreth wrote a book "Cheaper by the Dozen" explaining the family life of the family.

Sources:

APPLIED MOTION STUDY by FRANK B. GILBRETH & L.M. GILBRETH

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Bunker_Gilbreth

http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/gilbreth2.html

http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/gilbreth.html

www.ergonomia.org.pl/bios/E-bio-Gilbreth.pdf

ABRAHAM MASLOW (1908-1970)

Abraham Maslow was a Jewish-American psychologist who is accepted as the father of humanistic psychology. Since he was the only Jewish boy in his childhood, he felt very much loneliness. And this loneliness forced him to find his refuge in books, and would be a fundamental factor that will make him study humanistic psychology later. His most famous work for human psychology is admittedly “Pyramid of Hierarchy of Needs”. This pyramid consists of five parts first of which starts from bottom as “psychological needs” and finishes as “self actualization”.

***Firs step of the pyramid is Biological and Physiological needs – such as, air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, sex, and sleep.

***The second step consist of Safety needs – like, protection from elements, security, order, law, limits, stability.

***Belongingness and Love needs is the third step of the pyramid –containing, work group, family,

affection, relationships.

***The fourth step of the pyramid is Esteem needs – consisting of, self-esteem, achievement, mastery, independence, status, dominance, prestige, managerial responsibility

***Self-Actualization needs is the final and the top step of the pyramid- realizing personal potential, self-fulfillment, seeking personal growth and peak experiences...

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs can also be adapted to workplace as in the following form:

*Physiological needs: Providing lunch breaks, resting breaks, and waging that are sufficient to purchase the essentials of life.

*Safety Needs: Providing a safe working environment, retirement benefits, and job security.

*Social Needs: Creating a sense of community via team-based projects and social events.

*Esteem Needs: Recognizing achievements to make employees feel appreciated and valued. Offering job titles that convey the importance of the position.

*Self-Actualization: Providing employees a challenge and the opportunity to reach their full career potential.

Sources:

POLITICS and INNOCENCE A Humanistic Debate - Saybrook publishers

http://motivationcentre.blogspot.com/2006/03/implications-of-maslows-hierarchy-of.html

http://www.valuebasedmanagement.net/images/picture_maslow.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

Henri Fayol (1841-1925)

Henri Fayol was an French engineer and management theorist who was born in Istanbul. He worked as a mine engineer through out his life in mines in French, and during his working life, he developed some basic management principles, which would become the fundamentals of scientific management later. For him, there are five primary principles of management; planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating and controlling. He lived in the same life period with F. Winslow Taylor who is accepted as “the father of modern management”. Therefore, Taylor’s and Fayol’s ideas are usually compared as they both worked on “scientific management issue, but in different aspects.” The sharpest difference between these two scientists is that, while Taylor viewed management processes from the bottom up, Henri Fayol viewed it from the top down. That is to say, Taylor apply his ideas firstly from workers and then to administrators while Fayol sees the first step as directors.

Here is the chart that explains the management principles and steps of Henri Fayol.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Fayol

http://www.biografiasyvidas.com/biografia

Genel ve Endüstriyel Yönetim -HENRI FAYOL- ADRES Yayınları

Frederick Winslow Taylor(1856-1915)

Frederick Winslow Taylor (March 20, 1856 - March 21, 1915), widely known as F. W. Taylor, was an American mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. A management consultant in his later years, he is sometimes called "the father of scientific management." He was one of the intellectual leaders of the Efficiency Movement and his ideas, broadly conceived, were highly influential in the Progressive Era.

By far the most influential person of the time and someone who has had an impact on management service practice as well as on management thought up to the present day, was F. W. Taylor. Taylor formalized the principles of scientific management, and the fact-finding approach put forward and largely adopted was a replacement for what had been the old rule of thumb.

Objectives of Scientific Management

The four objectives of management under scientific management were as follows:

• The development of a science for each element of a man's work to replace the old rule-of-thumb methods.
• The scientific selection, training and development of workers instead of allowing them to choose their own tasks and train themselves as best they could.
• The development of a spirit of hearty cooperation between workers and management to ensure that work would be carried out in accordance with scientifically devised procedures.
• The division of work between workers and the management in almost equal shares, each group taking over the work for which it is best fitted instead of the former condition in which responsibility largely rested with the workers. Self-evident in this philosophy are organizations arranged in a hierarchy, systems of abstract rules and impersonal relationships between staff.

F.W. Taylor's contribution to organizational theory

This required an organization theory similar for all practical purposes to that advocated by those organizational theorists who followed. These theorists developed principles of management, which included much of Taylor's philosophy

His framework for organization was:

• clear delineation of authority
• responsibility
• separation of planning from operations
• incentive schemes for workers
• management by exception
• task specialization

Sources:

http://www.accel-team.com/scientific/scientific_02.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor

Henry Ford(1863-1947)

Father of Mass Production
-HENRY FORD-

Henry Ford, born July 30, 1863, was the first of William and Mary Ford's six children.

In 1891, Ford became an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit. This event signified a conscious decision on Ford's part to dedicate his life to industrial pursuits. His promotion to Chief Engineer in 1893 gave him enough time and money to devote attention to his personal experiments on internal combustion engines.

After two unsuccessful attempts to establish a company to manufacture automobiles, the Ford Motor Company was incorporated in 1903 with Henry Ford as vice-president and chief engineer. The infant company produced only a few cars a day at the Ford factory on Mack Avenue in Detroit. Groups of two or three men worked on each car from components made to order by other companies.

Henry Ford realized his dream of producing an automobile that was reasonably priced, reliable, and efficient with the introduction of the Model T in 1908. This vehicle initiated a new era in personal transportation. It was easy to operate, maintain, and handle on rough roads, immediately becoming a huge success.

By 1918, half of all cars in America were Model Ts. To meet the growing demand for the Model T, the company opened a large factory at Highland Park, Michigan, in 1910. Here, Henry Ford combined precision manufacturing, standardized and interchangeable parts, a division of labor, and, in 1913, a continuous moving assembly line. Workers remained in place, adding one component to each automobile as it moved past them on the line. Delivery of parts by conveyor belt to the workers was carefully timed to keep the assembly line moving smoothly and efficiently. The introduction of the moving assembly line revolutionized automobile production by significantly reducing assembly time per vehicle, thus lowering costs. Ford's production of Model Ts made his company the largest automobile manufacturer in the world.

The father of the Model T, the automobile assembly line, and commercial aviation was a crafty, workaholic businessman and an iron-fisted autocrat, who did things as he saw fit. He also was a social philanthropist, noted naturalist, and eminent folklorist. Henry Ford is so complex and so elusive that more than one hundred biographies have tried to delineate his character, shedding light on his facets while obscuring the hole.

What we do know is that Henry Ford the businessman and Henry Ford the man are not necessarily one and the same. He had very serious interests beyond automobiles, including global politics, industrial politics, industrial uses for agricultural products, environmental conservation, and positive change in human behavior through work.

The assembly line reduced production costs for cars by reducing assembly time. Ford's famous Model T was assembled in ninety-three minutes. Ford made his first car, called the "Quadricycle," in June, 1896. However, success came after he formed the Ford Motor Company in 1903. This was the third car manufacturing company formed to produce the cars he designed. He introduced the Model T in 1908 and it was a success. After installing the moving assembly lines in his factory in 1913, Ford became the world's biggest car manufacturer. By 1927, 15 million Model Ts had been manufactured.

Another victory won by Henry Ford was patent battle with George B. Selden. Selden, who had never built an automobile, held a patent on a "road engine", on that basis Selden was paid royalties by all American car manufacturers. Ford overturned Selden's patent and opened the American car market for the building of inexpensive cars.

Sources:

‘THE FORD CENTURY’ -Ford Motor Company and the Innovations That Shaped The World- By Russ Banham Foreword, By Paul Newman.

‘MY FORTY YEARS with FORD’ By Charles E. Sorensen.

http://www.thehenryford.org