Evolution of Industrial Engineering - Gunn, Towne, Diemer, and Going, AIIE, IISE

1901, James Newton Gunn first proposed the term Industrial Engineer.

In 1901, James Newton Gunn first proposed the term Industrial Engineer.

While all manufacturers agree that a knowledge of the operations of the business is of paramount importance, they are inclined to scrutinize out of all relative proportion those expenditures required to give them these results. They further are slow to enter into a scientific investigation of the facts presented in their own business, becoming impatient of final results and refusing to recognize that each manufacturer must, to a large degree, in solving the problem of costs, solve the problem of the economic relations of the investor and the laborer. This problem yields only to long pains-taking study.

I believe so thoroughly in the fundamental importance of cost keeping and factory organization as to proffer this suggestion : that while engineering to day has, as its recognized representatives, civil, mechanical, mining, and electrical engineers—those who deal rather with processes and mechanical methods —yet there exists a science which only awaits the creation of a literature to have its own existence recognized as a new department of engineering. Our various industrial organizations are successful directly as their executive or administrative heads have made a study and application of the principles of that science, which may be termed the science of production. The successful manager has himself become a member of this existing, but as yet unrecognized, engineering profession. The discovery, study, and collation of the facts, and the enunciation and application of the principles of this science, are the work of the production or industrial engineer.

James Newton Gunn joined in 1908 Harvard Business School


Gunn, James Newton. Cost keeping; a subject of fundamental importance. (En-
gineering magazine. New York. v. 20, Jan., 1901, p. 703-708.) 

"The author draws clearly the outlines of the province of the production or industrial engineer."

volume 20, Engineering magazine.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015075018641;view=1up;seq=769

Industrial Engineering  - Henry R. Towne

An Address Delivered by Henry R. Towne, M.E.
At the Purdue University Friday, February 24th, 1905

Let me tell you what I understand to be implied by the term Industrial Engineering. The phrase is not entirely new, but it has not yet acquired sufficient currency to make it entirely familiar. Industrial Engineering is the practice of one or more branches of engineering in connection with some organized establishment of a productive character, in which are conducted the operations required in the production of some article, or series of articles, of commerce or consumption. Nearly all industrial work of this kind, especially if it be conducted on a large scale, involves technical, physical, and engineering questions, varying with the kind of industry but usually of wide scope. For instance, in steam engine building it is primarily a question of thermodynamics and steam engineering, but it involves equally the question of the selection and right use of machines, tools, and methods of production. So likewise in electrical work, the textile industries, and all the range of our manifold industries. On its technical side each has its special and distinctive features; but on its administrative side each involves certain fundamental elements which are common to all. The technical work may be in charge of a technical man, responsible for that work only. The administrative work may be in charge of another man, not fortunate enough to have had a technical training, but a good administrator. If these two work in harmony a good result should follow. But a better result in every way will be reached where these two functions are combined in one person; where one master mind knows both the technical side of the work and how to select and direct the men who shall attend to its details, and who also has the ability and the training needed to qualify him to direct and control the work of administration. The union of these two functions in the one individual constitutes the best kind of material with which to fill leading positions, the kind of material the captains of industry are always looking for.

Now, what constitutes the administrative work of industrial engineering? What does it imply and involve? The man who is responsible for the daily operation and, still more, for the vitality and growth of a large industrial plant, must be a many-sided Engineer. He has to consider the planning and, construction of new buildings. He may have an architect to assist in this, but the buildings which he requires are in a certain sense machines, designed to meet certain conditions and produce certain results with which the architect is not familiar, with which the manager himself should be more familiar than anyone else, and which, therefore, he pre-eminently should be qualified to plan. He has also to deal with the question of power and its distribution, with steam engines and boilers, with electric generation and transmission, with shafting and belting, in many cases with pumping and the use of compressed air for many purposes, in all cases with heating, ventilating, plumbing and sanitation, and in large plants with questions of internal transportation. In my own practice, which has not been exceptional nor as wide in scope as that of many others, all of these questions and many more have entered directly and continuously. Is it not clear that such a man must be manysided, and that any or all of the information you are absorbing in these splendid technical courses which you have the privilege of attending here is liable to come into play, and to do good service to any one of you who may chance in future years to find himself in a position of the kind I have attempted to outline?

In one of its phases industrial engineering has recently become a specialized vocation, which in passing I will touch on because it may appeal to some of you. We have today, not many, but a few very prominent examples of a new type of engineers who call themselves productive or production engineers-men who in a consulting practice offer their services to existing industries for the purpose of studying them and then modernizing them by the introduction of the latest improvements, not only in processes but even more in methods of management. One of the earliest apostles of this new cult, and one of its most original leaders, is Mr. Fred W. Taylor of Philadelphia, whose work in investigating the possibilities of the use of high speed steels is familiar to all engineers in the metal industries, and is of the greatest interest and value. But Mr. Taylor has equally distinguished himself by developing new methods for the compensation of labor in industrial work, which are quite as revolutionary as the increased output of machine tools which has followed from the introduction of high speed steels. In each case it is a demonstrated fact that he has obtained an increased production two, two and one-half, or even three times greater than what was previously accomplished under the best conditions and practice. Entering into the same field of work is the firm of Dodge & Day of Philadelphia, Mr. Gunn of New York, and others whom I might name. I mention these facts in passing to call attention to a new line of practice in the field of consulting engineering which is attractive and, I believe, highly remunerative.

As I said at the beginning, the dollar is the final term in every engineering equation, and cost is a part, and a vital part, of the work of the Engineer, the final end of which should be the attainment of the best result in the most economical manner. But when the Engineer has to deal with the complex organism of a great industry, employing hundreds or, as is more frequently the case now, thousands of operatives, and utilizing the applied sciences in a vast number of their various developments, he cannot obtain the accurate knowledge he needs and should have of what he is doing, or trying to do, save through the medium of an accurate and highly organized system of accounting, nor can such system be planned by any ordinary mercantile accountant, unfamiliar with industrial questions and manufacturing operations. A good accountant, lacking this experience, can often assist greatly in conducting the purely accounting part of the work, but must be guided and directed by a mind which grasps all of the factors involved, as he cannot grasp them from lack of technical knowledge, and which sees clearly, through this tangle and maze of crossing and conflicting conditions, the essential elements in the problems and the final result to be reached. Therefore, industrial accounting is basic in its value to the industrial Engineer, and those of you who adopt the latter field of practice will sooner or later realize this fact and be thankful if at any time you have the opportunity, and avail of it, to acquire at least the rudiments of knowledge of industrial accounting.

Aim always that you shall know at least as much, if not more, about the work than any subordinate; that no one under you shall long or permanently know more that is important about it than you. Get as big men under you as you can, but try always to be bigger yourself, and if that implies fresh study and fresh work, do it.

INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING  - Prof. HUGO DIEMER

FACTORY ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION
BY
HUGO DIEMER, M.E.
Professor of Industrial Engineering, Pennsylvania State
College; Consulting Industrial Engineer
FIRST EDITION
McGRAW-HILL BOOK COMPANY
239 WEST 39TH STREET, NEW YORK
6 BOUVERIE STREET, LONDON, E.G.
1910
HUGO DIEMER.
STATE COLLEGE, PA., July 1, 1910.
254501


CHAPTER I
INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING

IT is now some twenty years since Mr. Henry R. Towne presented to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers a paper on "Gain Sharing/' in which he assumed that everything connected with successful factory management constituted a part of the work of the engineer.

Mr. Taylor stands to-day as the earliest and foremost advocate of modern business or industrial engineering. As early as 1889, Mr. Taylor earnestly pleaded that shop statistics and cost data should be more than mere records, and that they in themselves constituted but a small portion of the field of investigation to be covered by the industrial engineer. While he did not so express himself, the gist of his treatment of factory management is this:

He considers a manufacturing establishment just as one would an intricate machine. He analyzes each process into its ultimate, simple elements, and compares each of these simplest steps or processes with an ideal or perfect condition. He then makes all due allowances for rational and practical conditions and establishes an attainable commercial standard for every step. The next process is that of attaining continuously this standard, involving both quality and quantity, and the interlocking or assembling of all of these prime elements into a well-arranged, well-built, smooth-running machine. It is quite evident that work of this character involves technical knowledge and ability in science and pure engineering, which do not enter into the field of the accountant. Yet the industrial  engineer must have the accountant's keen perception of money values. His work will not be good engineering unless he uses good business judgment. He must be able to select those mechanical devices and perfect such organization as will best suit present needs and secure prompt returns in profit. He must have sufficiently good business sense to appreciate the ratio between investment and income. He must be in close enough touch with the financial management to be able to impress upon them the necessity of providing sinking funds to provide for the more perfect installations and organizations which future demands of a more

educated and enlightened public will necessitate.

The industrial engineer to-day must be as competent to give good business advice to his corporation as is the skilled corporation attorney. Upon his sound judgment and good advice depend very frequently the making or losing of large fortunes. Mr. James Newton Gunn is responsible for the use of the term " production engineer" or "industrial engineer" in speaking of the engineer who has to do with plant efficiency.

The word "production" indicates the making or manufacturing of commodities. Engineering as applied to production means the planning in advance of production so as to secure certain results. A man may be a good mechanic but no engineer. The distinction between the mechanic and the engineer is that the mechanic cuts and tries, and works by formulae based on empiricism. The engineer calculates and plans with absolute certainty of the accomplishment of the final results in accordance with his plans, which are based ultimately on fundamental truths of natural science.

The mechanical engineer has to do with the design, construction, testing, and operating of machines. The mechanical engineer designs with certainty of correct operation and adequate strength. Production engineering has to do with the output of men and machines. It requires a knowledge of both. The product involved may be anything that is made by or with the aid of machinery.

It is the business of the production engineer to know every single item that constitutes his finished product, and every step involved in the handling of every piece. He must know what is the most advantageous manufacturing quantity of every single item so as to secure uniformity of flow as well as economy of manufacture. He must know how long each step ought to take under the best attainable working conditions. He must be able to tell at any time the exact condition as regards quantity and state of finishedness of every part involved in his manufacturing

process.

The engineer must be able not only to design, but to execute. A draftsman may be able to design, but unless he is able to execute his designs to successful operation he cannot be classed as an engineer. The production engineer must be able to execute his work as he has planned it. This requires two qualifications in addition to technical engineering ability: He must know men, and he must have creative ability in applying good statistical, accounting, and "system" methods to any particular production work he may undertake.

With regard to men, he must know how to stimulate ambition, how to exercise discipline with firmness, and at the same time with sufficient kindness to insure the good-will and cooperation of all. The more thoroughly he is versed in questions of economics and sociology, the better prepared will he be to meet the problems that will daily confront him. As economic production depends not only on equipment and plant, but on the psychological effect of wage systems, he must be able to discriminate in regard to which wage system is best applicable to certain classes of product.

For many years the orthodox courses in mechanical engineering as taught in our leading technical universities have elaborated and specialized on applied mechanics and thermodynamics. It has been only within recent years that problems of practical machine design, combining a rational teaching of the subject based upon fundamental laws of stresses and factors of safety rather than empirical rules, have been introduced. Within the past few years a number of leading universities have endeavored to meet the demand for young men with some preparation to fit them for beginners in fields which would lead to industrial management, by introducing so-called courses in commerce and business in its higher relations. The work of these courses has been directed almost exclusively towards distributional and financial rather than the productive side of business enterprises. A great demand at the present time is for young men specially prepared, capable, and willing to enter the productive departments of manufacturing establishments. In order that America may assume her natural leadership in export trade, we need not only experts in financing and distribution, but experts in production.

It is a noticeable characteristic of the manufacturing establishments of this country that turn out an engineering product of high excellency, that their technical staff includes not only designers but company officers, and heads of productive departments as well.

I do not wish to be misunderstood as claiming that we can by any system of education prepare young men so that immediately after graduation from some kind of a college or university course they can be full-fledged managers or production engineers. The work of industrial management is of such nature that it requires not only thorough preparation, but the stability of age and practical experience which should cover not only a period of at least ten years, but varied fields of work. The school can, however, develop an aptitude as well as a desire to fill certain minor staff positions in the management of industrial enterprises, so that a technical graduate may, after serving his apprenticeship of several years, be able and willing to assume the duties of foreman or head of some shop department, or some department such as Production, Tracing, Stores, Cost, Employment, or Purchasing. I do not wish to advocate the supplanting of  the shop foreman who has advanced from the ranks of the craftsmen by college-trained young men who have completed their apprenticeship, nor will we ever have such a condition. But I claim that we should have (and I believe that we are bound to have) an increasing number of technical college graduates filling positions in practically all of the departments of manufacturing corporations, instead of in only the designing, drafting, and testing departments.

INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING  - C.B. Going

C.B. Going gave lecture on the concept and practice of industrial engineering in Columbia University College of Engineering, New York during 1907 to 1911 as special lecturer and his teaching notes was converted into a textbook with the title "Principles of Industrial Engineering."

Industrial engineering is the applied science of management. It 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.

It is of very recent origin. It is only just emerging from the formative period. Its elements have been proposed during the past one or two decades. The conditions that have brought into being this new applied science, this new branch of engineering, grew out of the rise and enormous expansion of the manufacturing system.

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. It provides guidelines or direction to the work of operatives, using the equipment provided by the engineer, machinery builder, and architect.

The cycle of operations which the industrial engineer directs starts with money which is converted into raw materials and labor; raw materials and labor are converted into finished product or services of some kind; finished product, or service, is converted back into money. The difference between the first money and the last money is (in a very broad sense) the gross profit of the operation. The starting level (that is, the cost of raw materials and labor) and the final level (the price obtainable for finished product) these two levels are generally fixed by competition and market conditions. Profit of the operating cycle varies with the volume passing from level, to level. Higher volumes lead to greater profits. But with the efficiency of the conversions between these levels also determines the profits. In the case of a hydroelectric power-plant, there are conversion losses like  hydraulic, mechanical  and electrical. In industrial enterprises the conversion losses are in commercial, manufacturing, administrative and human operations. It is with the efficiency of these latter conversions that industrial engineering is concerned.

The central purpose of  industrial engineer  is efficient and economical production. He is concerned not only with the direction of the great sources of power in nature, but with the direction of these forces as exerted by machinery, working upon materials, and operated by men. It is the inclusion of the economic and the human elements especially that differentiates industrial engineering from the older established branches of the profession. To put it in another way : The work of the industrial engineer not only covers technical counsel and superintendence of the technical elements of large enterprises, but extends also over the management of men and the definition and direction of policies in fields that the financial or commercial man has always  considered exclusively his own.

INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING  - C.E. Knoeppel

An address delivered before Chicago Chapter of The Society of Industrial Engineers

The basis of industry has been and is Engineering Knowledge, but engineering knowledge has thought too much in terms of 2 plus 2 equals 4. It has given too much attention to matter—not enough to man. It has given too little attention to matching human variables against physical constants.

Engineering knowledge has built a wonderful structure in the shape of industry as we see it today but quicksand has been discovered and engineering knowledge must strengthen the structure, or, if necessary, rebuild it.

The next field for the Industrial Engineer is therefore that of industrial design, and on the shoulders of those representing engineering knowledge rests an enormous responsibility as builders of a new structure, which rising out of the ruins of the old will give the human the attention he deserves. Engineering knowledge must do this if our Twentieth Century civilization is not to be declared a sham; if we are to replace selfishness with service, and unhappiness with contentment. The Industrial Engineer of the future will there fore be an Industrial Architect.

We must take into consideration also that modern industry is a complex mechanism; that knowledge is so comprehensive and so vast as to make impossible for management to secure results unaided and unassisted. Therefore, the Industrial Engineer must step in as the staff organization of management to investigate, to devise, to formulate, to work up standard practice, to give counsel, and to assist management in the work of co-ordinating the money of capital and the work of labor. The Industrial Engineer of the future will .therefore be an Executive to Executives.

No attainment is ever greater or more efficient than the organization which makes it possible.

Industrial organization and management / Hugo Diemer.
Chicago, IL : La Salle Extension University, 1920, c1918.
Subjects: Industrial management.
Industrial organization.
Note: Includes index.
Physical Description: xv, 291 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=osu.32435078384328;view=1up;seq=1

Diemer, Hugo, 1870-1937.


1948

Industrial engineering survey
Barnes, Ralph Mosser, 1948
IE report 101
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/010361541

A STUDY OF THE EVOLUTION OF INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the

Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By

DAVID FLOYD BAKER, B.I.E., K.Sc.

*****

The Ohio State University

1957

https://etd.ohiolink.edu/apexprod/rws_etd/send_file/send?accession=osu1486464627807783&disposition=inline

The backbone of the tendency toward greater productivity is to be found in the development of power

and power distribution systems. The steam turbine replaced the steam engine of the previous periods

and the 5*000 kw units of the 1910 era were superceded by units of 208,000 kw.

By 1926 there were 20,000 movie theaters in the United States, with an average attendance of

100,000,000 persons per week, a figure only slightly smaller than the total population (91? p. 613).

The price of the earlier models was on the order of $1200-$1500 and the price of the Model

T $800. In the years from 1910 to 1914, first one then another of the sub-assemblies had been put on a

moving assembly line basis until in 1914, for the first time, the ehain-drive chassis line was put in

operation. The price of the car had dropped to about $500 and Ford announced the $5 pay for an

eight-hour day. In 1919 the $6 day was announced; the price of the Ford had dropped to about $300 by

1924; and in 1926 came the five-day week. (14, chap. xv).

But such a change had to be, and was, grounded in specific developments that generated a rejection of the earlier attitudes. It stemmed from a combination of forces. One was a belief that after the war, unionism would continue to expand until it enlisted most of the workers of the nation, making it impossible to avoid union recognition and collective bargaining. In view of what appeared

to be inevitable, the scientific managers began to revise their conception of industrial management. The cordial relations they maintained with labor leaders on government boards during the war made the change more palatable and acceptable. Although the expected growth of unions did not materialize

after 1921. the Taylorites had already fashioned their new philosophy; since labor subsequently did nothing to contradict it. they were forced by the logic of their own arguments and their personal inclinations to continue to propound and accept it. Oddly enough, It was the probability, rather

than the long-term reality, of union growth that played an important part in the revision of scientific management philosophy.

Another force was the acceptance of the Brandeis-Valentine argument that the techniques of scientific

management were only tools, to be combined with industrial democracy ("consent of the worker") in the pursuit of industrial efficiency. The impact of Valentine’s work cannot be underestimated. It is indeed significant that Morris L. Cooke, who exerted the greatest individual influence in effecting the basic change in the attitudes of union and scientific management leaders, cited Valentine on the signal occasions when Gompers and Green gave their blessings to the Taylor-inspired movement.

From the studies that were taken in the late 1920's and subsequent commentary, the ultimate

occupation for up to 75 per cent of the engineering graduates was recognized as being administrative

or managerial rather than purely technical. The financial and status rewards of the culture tend

to be greater for managerial rather than technical pursuits. The engineering educator tends to regard

the assumption of managerial responsibility by his student as evidence of success, and recognition and

awards are apt to be based on administrative ability rather than technical accomplishment. The question

as to whether engineering education is a superior academic basis for management responsibilities has

not been resolved.

There were seven undergraduate business schools in 1900 and thirty-eight in 1928. The number of undergraduates in 1928 was 4,368 for the business schools with an additional 2,331 from the graduate schools (69» P*808)

The earliest single course in shop management, so far as we can ascertain was offered in 1902 at the University of Kansas and was taught by Hugo Diemer. Col. Diemer had previously written

articles on the subject for Charles B. Going's Engineering Magazine and through these articles had become acquainted with Taylor. In 1907 General Beaver, ex-Governor of Pennsylvania and President of the Board of Trustees of The Pennsylvania State College, had a conversation with Taylor at the union League Club of Philadelphia. Beaver told Taylor that he was looking for a man to head their M.E. Depart￾ment, who could "teach M.E. from the standpoint of manufacturing rather than from the standpoint of power plant tests and higher mathematics." Taylor re￾commended Diemer and in this way Diemer became, in 1908, the head of the first Industrial Engineering Department in the United States. His first class of two men was graduated in 1911. In 1910, C. E. Benjamin, at the demand of alumni, started a department at Purdue University and his first class of 50 was graduated in 1912. G. H.

Follows of Carnegie Institute was the next to follow in 1912, producing a class of five in 1915. Cornell University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Hew York University followed in 1914, etc. At Cornell, D. S. Kimball had given a single course since 1904. He had returned to teaching after an 

interval in industry and was impressed with the careers of such engineers as C. C. Chesney, since in charge of all production in the General Electric Company. Kimball found it difficult to convince other faculty members that industrial engineering was a coming field but at the end of ten years he

succeeded (69, p. 807-8).

The number of engineering colleges with full industrial engineering courses increased from 6 in 1914 to 35 in 1931 with a total of something over 596 graduates in that year.

Updated 28.9.2022,  30.6.2022,   15 March 2019, 21 January 2019,