As the frontiers of technology advance and the work of engineers takes on an increasingly important role in our economy, companies with effective product development and engineering processes will be poised to create value for their shareholders. Those without the will to improve engineering and product development processes will be destined to lag behind.

Our university engineering programs focus on graduating technically sound engineers. Students study the disciplines of structural design or fluid mechanics. However, in both North America and Europe, little attention is paid to teaching the practice of engineering management. Engineering programs typically contain a fourth-year course on engineering economics, where students are taught the mechanics of discounted cash flows and budgets. The courses do not deal with the challenges of managing complex engineering-driven companies. With this gap in the training of engineers, it should come as no surprise when a graduate engineer practices engineering for two or three years and then leaves the profession to take an MBA. Many of these bright young engineers cut all ties to engineering. However, MBA programs are not designed to create engineering managers. The best of them teach the integration of management disciplines to teach general management; however, the worst provide the engineer with little more than a few specialized tools to apply in the area of marketing or finance. Generally speaking, the practice of engineering management is not taught in our universities.