Improving Management of Technology

Abstract

The United States, for the first time, finds itself losing its worldwide competitive position in industrial manufacturing and also in international engineering and construction. Some of the reasons are reviewed, focusing particularly on the role of the engineer in the management of technology. Both management issues and technological issues are assessed. Two‐thirds of U.S. manufacturing companies are headed by a person with no technical training while in Japan two‐thirds of the company heads have engineering or science education. It seems unfortunate that such training is not judged to be important by U.S. corporate heads. Problems of communication within the organizations appear to be a major constraint to improving manufacturing and examples of this are given in case studies. Organizations usually do not recognize the full extent of the communication problem, continuing to operate as in the past. Finally, the capability of engineers as technical managers is discussed and an education program to improve this is proposed.