Industrial Engineering - History

History

Efforts to apply science to the design of processes and of production systems were made by many people in the 18th and 19th centuries. They took some time to evolve and to be synthesized into disciplines that we would label with names such as industrial engineering, production engineering, or systems engineering. For example, precursors to industrial engineering included some aspects of military science; the quest to develop manufacturing using interchangeable parts; the development of the armory system of manufacturing; the work of Henri Fayol and colleagues (which grew into a larger movement called Fayolism); and the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor and colleagues (which grew into a larger movement called scientific management). In the late 19th century, such efforts began to inform consultancy and higher education. The idea of consulting with experts about process engineering naturally evolved into the idea of teaching the concepts as curriculum.

Industrial engineering courses were taught by multiple universities in Europe at the end of the 19th century, including in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Spain. In the United States, the first department of industrial and manufacturing engineering was established in 1909 at the Pennsylvania State University. The first doctoral degree in industrial engineering was awarded in the 1930s by Cornell University.