Management Engineering

We are starting to have a new course here in the Philippines which is called Management Engineering.

Most of us will say that it's just an old course because we are seeing courses like Engineering Management.

But in reality

Management Engineering is different from Engineering Management



Most engineering disciplines, such as mechanical engineering, civil engineering, naval engineering, etc. deal with building things that are visible. Even electrical engineering is somewhat a misnomer, since it really deals with circuits, not electricity. Circuits are visible. Engineers like to work with something that they can see. When something doesn't fit, or something breaks, it is usually pretty obvious and you can quickly tell how to fix it.

Management engineering is different it is a new field. It has been around in bits and pieces, but with the Balanced Scorecard it is becoming a specific branch of engineering that takes a comprehensive approach to management. It is not a system for automating management. The humans are still -- and even more so -- in the control loop. Management engineering simply attempts to apply practices that are standard in other engineering fields, such as measurements, testing, feedback, control loops, work breakdown structures, and risk mitigation -- and apply them appropriately to a business. The assumption underlying management engineering is that the organization can be modeled as an interacting system, with cause-and-effect chains, feedback loops and other structures that behave like those in other systems -- except that this one is not as visible. Management engineering tools are used to make the system visible so that managers can understand it and guide it better.

Management engineering is not a reincarnation of Frederick Taylor's efficiency analysis. That concept, a product of the industrial age, modeled an organization as a mechanical system, in which the people were just seen as cogs in the wheels. Now, in the information age, this concept is seen as a demeaning and false view of the role of people in an organization. In the information age, people are the source of new ideas and innovation -- the key driver of growth, and the source of competitiveness in any organization. Therefore in the information economy -- and especially in government -- information is the lifeblood, the currency of the agency. Proper coddling and nourishing of new ideas is vital to future growth. Any strategic management plan must take information -- and the people that create it -- very seriously.

In the Philippines only 2 schools based on what I know offer Management Engineering

One is Ateneo de Manila University for their undergraduate course under the Gokongwei school of Management

http://www.ateneo.edu/som/programs/me/me_index.htm

and the other one is the University of Santo Tomas through their graduate school.

http://graduateschool.ust.edu.ph/

Overall, I could say that it is a nice and wholistic course as I am actually taking it right now.

Source: With reference on

http://www.balancedscorecard.org/ManagementEngineering/tabid/134/Default.aspx