Emergence of Production and Industrial Engineering

In this chapter, a brief history of the emergence of production and industrial engineering is presented. Significant developments in its evolution, education and course structure, and the profession of production and industrial engineering are highlighted. New technologies and their possible application for improving productivity and quality of product, process, and service are briefly discussed. 

We have seen that physical chemistry evolved from a deep dissatisfaction in the minds of a few pioneers with the current state of chemistry as a whole one could say that its emergence was research-driven and spread across the world by hordes of new Ph.Ds. Chemical engineering was driven by industrial needs and the corresponding changes that were required in undergraduate education. Polymer science started from a wish to understand certain natural products and moved by... 

The Russian economist, Kondratiev, has analysed the waves in world economic growth from the invention of the steam engine and cotton production to the rise of the chemical and automotive industries in post-war time and the contemporary emergence of the information society. Figure 19.1 illustrates the five cycles that have been identified since the eighteenth century. 

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