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EMGT 830
Case Studies in Engineering Management

Summer 2006
Meets Mondays from 6:10 - 10:00pm
Format: On-site and Distance Learning
Credits: 2

Instructor

Course Description

Course Objectives

Engineering Management is a combination of technology and management practices that its students learn and put into practice in their real business setting. This course, EMGT 830, is designed to help the student gain better insight into analyzing management situations by using case studies as well as studying various management theories and in the process synthesizing concepts and approaches learned in the core EMGT program.

Case studies provide a framework of thinking. In class the students will learn how to write their own case studies, to extend existing case studies and to assess the impact on the problem or problems at hand. Emphasis is on building an experience base in interviewing and getting sources of information that are non traditional for engineers.

What is the risk in a certain course of action? It is necessary to think far enough into the future to give an assessment of what the possible outcomes of courses of action might be. In this class, the students learn to do research to support and extend analyses to estimate or predict the "behavior" of a business, a product or process on a time line basis and be able to assess outcomes. By learning and studying case studies, management strategies can be evaluated so that risk is minimized.

External influences and events have a significant impact on a proposed course of action or actions. The business, government and social environments have as much to do with the outcomes of technical decisions as the technology itself. Accordingly, the students review "Movements in Management" to gain perspective on fads, present practices and evolving theories. The class will discuss and assess claims, concepts and management philosophies from "Further UP the Organization" by Townsend. One goal of the course is to compare, contrast and share these with the students present and past experiences.

Another important goal of the course is to strengthen the student's communication skills, both written and oral. Accordingly, significant weight is given to the student presentations, the accompanying briefing materials and to the written paper for the original case study.

Finally, as the capstone course in the Engineering Management Program, it provides an excellent opportunity and forum to begin the student's Field Project. Working with his or her Advisor, the student will choose a topic for the project (possibly an extension of the original case study), prepare a pre-proposal and present it to the class for feedback and comments.

In short, this course is aimed at:

• improving the students understanding of management theories and approaches
• improving the students problem solving techniques
• improving the students analysis techniques
• improving the students abilities to forecast possible outcomes
• improving the students abilities to analyze "what if " scenarios
• minimizing risk in engineering management decision making (which is as much people concerns as technical)
• determining how organizations work and how people interact to better analyze probable outcomes using time histories and existing business, technological and social environments to provide a situation analysis of previous management decision processes

Textbooks

 

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