Engineering By Discipline

"This morning I came, I saw and I was conquered, as everyone would be who sees for the first time this great feat of mankind."

"Ten years ago the place where we are gathered was an unpeopled, forbidding desert. In the bottom of a gloomy canyon, whose precipitous walls rose to a height of more than a thousand feet, flowed a turbulent, dangerous river. The mountains on either side of the canyon were difficult of access with neither road nor trail, and their rocks were protected by neither trees nor grass from the blazing heat of the sun. The site of Boulder City was a cactus-covered waste. The transformation wrought here in these years is a twentieth-century marvel."

"We are here to celebrate the completion of the greatest dam in the world, rising 726 feet above the bed-rock of the river and altering the geography of a whole region; we are here to see the creation of the largest artificial lake in the world—115 miles long, holding enough water, for example, to cover the State of Connecticut to a depth of ten feet; and we are here to see nearing completion a power house which will contain the largest generators and turbines yet installed in this country, machinery that can continuously supply nearly two million horsepower of electric energy."

"A great bridge is a great monument which should serve to make known the splendour and genius of a nation; one should not occupy oneself with efforts to perfect it architecturally, for taste is always susceptible to change, but to conserve always in its form and decoration the character of solidity which is proper."

"From the laying out of a line of a tunnel to its final completion, the work may be either a series of experiments made at the expense of the proprietors of the project, or a series of judicious applications of the results of previous experience."

"If you can’t reduce a difficult engineering problem to just one 8-1/2 x 11-inch sheet of paper, you will probably never understand it."

"Mechanical engineering is now the largest branch, with nearly 40 percent of the profession's members. Civil engineering, which was the largest branch prior to World War II, has dropped to second place, with about 25 percent of all engineers."

"Bhakra Nangal Project is something tremendous, something stupendous, something which shakes you up when you see it. Bhakra, the new temple of resurgent India, is the symbol of India’s progress."

"The form a city assumes as it evolves over time owes more to large-scale works of civil engineering - what we now call infrastructure - than almost any other factor save topography."

"Comparatively few engineers are good mathematicians; and... it is fortunate that such is the case; for nature rarely combines high mathematical talent, with that practical tact, and observation of outward things, so essential to a successful engineer. There have been... brilliant exceptions; but they are very rare. But few even of those who have been tolerable mathematicians when young, can, as they advance in years, and become engaged in business, spare the time necessary for retaining such accomplishments. Nearly all the scientific principles which constitute the foundation of civil engineering are susceptible of complete and satisfactory explanation to any person who really possesses only so much elementary knowledge of arithmetic and natural philosophy as is supposed to be taught to boys of twelve or fourteen in our public schools."

"The civil engineer is the real 19th century architect."

"Improvement makes strait roads: but the crooked roads without Improvement are roads of Genius."

"Mechanical differs from Civil Engineering in the fact that the former provides or makes what the latter uses. On this account, a knowledge of mechanical engineering is of invaluable service to the civil engineer, and it should be the rule to obtain this practically, whatever branch of engineering the student may ultimately follow."

"Mechanical Engineering is applicable rather to works connected with private enterprise, such as the designing and construction of steam machinery for the purposes of navigation and transportation, the adaptation of such machinery to mills and factories, the construction of water-wheels, the fabrication of materials, iron, steel, and brass, for the purposes of the engineer, the architect, and manufacturer ; and the manufacture of implements and machinery for agriculture, for mining, and for domestic purposes. But the prominent feature of Mechanical Engineering, that which contributes more than any other to elevate it to the rank of a liberal or learned profession, and at the same time separates it from the science of Civil Engineering, is, that all its operations relate to power, motion, and work."

"A physician, a civil engineer, and a computer scientist were arguing about what was the oldest profession in the world. The physician remarked, "Well, in the Bible, it says that God created Eve from a rib taken out of Adam. This clearly required surgery, and so I can rightly claim that mine is the oldest profession in the world." The civil engineer interrupted, and said, "But even earlier in the book of Genesis, it states that God created the order of the heavens and the earth from out of the chaos. This was the first and certainly the most spectacular application of civil engineering. Therefore, fair doctor, you are wrong: mine is the oldest profession in the world." The computer scientist leaned back in her chair, smiled, and then said confidently, "Ah, but who do you think created the chaos?""

"He who builds in the streets must allow himself to get dirty."

"His father loved him dearly, but his work, that of a civil engineer, had left him with but little time for his family. Energetic, active, and always taken up with some responsible work, he did not spoil his children with excessive tenderness."

"No greater care is required upon any works than upon such as are to withstand the action of water; for this reason, all parts of the work need to be done exactly according to the rules of the art which all workmen know, but few observe."

"Go for civil engineering, because civil engineering is the branch of engineering which teaches you the most about managing people. Managing people is a skill which is very, very useful and applies almost regardless of what you do."

"Men build bridges and throw railroads across deserts, and yet they contend successfully that the job of sewing on a button is beyond them. Accordingly, they don’t have to sew buttons."

"There is nothing in machinery, there is nothing in embankments and railways and iron bridges and engineering devices to oblige them to be ugly. Ugliness is the measure of imperfection."

"My point is that the enterprise engineer uses, or is guided by, all of the concepts in the above list as may be appropriate to the specific task at hand; in many design tasks good citizenship, psychology, or ethics is more important than good calculus in achieving the optimum-solution or design. The preceding recommendations are intended primarily for Engineering Schools where already the student is trained and the faculty is experienced in methods of science and in the analysis and design functions."

"Cross-enterprise engineering is needed to support the global cooperation of internal and external organization units in the transformation of classic product development into a virtual process."

"A longer term objective for enterprise engineering is to make the practice a distributed activity, whereupon enterprise models become the everyday tool for all actors in the enterprise, from workers to the CEO."

"Enterprise Engineering is an emerging discipline, originating from both the Information System Sciences and the Organizational Sciences."

"It is the mission of the discipline of Enterprise Engineering to develop new, appropriate theories, models, methods and other artifacts for the analysis, design, implementation, and governance of enterprises by combining (relevant parts of) management and organization science, information systems science, and computer science. The ambition is to address (all) traditional topics in said disciplines from the Enterprise Engineering Paradigm. The result of our efforts should be theoretically rigorous and practically relevant."

"Enterprise engineering is an emerging discipline for developing enterprise capabilities. It is a multidisciplinary approach that takes a broad perspective in synthesizing technical and nontechnical (political, economic, organizational, operational, social and cultural) aspects of an enterprise capability. Enterprise engineering is directed towards enabling and achieving enterprise-level and cross-enterprise operations outcomes. Enterprise engineering is based on the premise that an enterprise is a collection of entities that want to succeed and will adapt to do so. The implication of this statement is that enterprise engineering processes are more about shaping the space in which organizations develop systems so that an organization innovating and operating to succeed in its local mission will—automatically and at the same time - innovate and operate in the interest of the enterprise. Enterprise engineering processes are focused more on shaping the environment, incentives and rules of success in which classical engineering takes place. Enterprise engineering coordinates, harmonizes and integrates the efforts of organizations and individuals through processes informed or inspired by natural evolution and economic markets. Enterprise engineering manages largely through interventions (innovations) instead of (rigorous/strict) controls."

"James Martin [in his The great transition (1995)] claims that enterprise engineering requires a focus on seven disciplines which can be linked directly to the value framework processes:"

"Enterprise Engineering is the application of engineering principles to the management of enterprises. It encompasses the application of knowledge, principles, and disciplines related to the analysis, design, implementation and operation of all elements associated with an enterprise. In essence it is an interdisciplinary field which combines systems engineering and strategic management as it seeks to engineer the entire enterprise in terms of the products, processes and business operations. The view is one of continuous improvement and continued adaptation as firms, processes and markets develop along their life cycles. This total systems approach encompasses the traditional areas of research and development, product design, operations and manufacturing as well as information systems and strategic management"

"Enterprise architecture (EA) promotes the belief that an enterprise, as a complex system, can be designed or improved in an orderly fashion achieving better overall results than ad-hoc organisation and design. EA is a co-operative effort of designers, analysts and managers and uses enterprise models in the process... enterprise models carry meaning. This resulted in requirements for the enterprise engineering process, which—if not met—can limit the viability of the process. The analysis of the same factors resulted in requirements for improved Enterprise Modelling Tools."

"Enterprise Engineering is the collection of those tools and methods which one can use to design and continually maintain an enterprise."

"Enterprise engineering is an emerging mode of systems engineering that manages and shapes forces of uncertainty to achieve enterprise capabilities through interventions instead of controls. It is directed toward enabling and achieving enterprise-level and cross-enterprise capability outcomes by building effective, efficient networks of individual systems to meet the objectives of the enterprise."

"An enterprise architecture is a "blueprint" or "picture" which assists in the design of an enterprise. An enterprise architecture must define three things. First, what are the activities that an enterprise performs? Second, how should these activities be performed? And finally, how should the enterprise be constructed? An enterprise is a collection of enterprise activities organized into a set of business processes which cooperate to produce desired enterprise results... The architecture takes a systems view of an enterprise in which an enterprise is seen as a system which takes in inputs and produces outputs under some set of environmental constraints..."

"The presence of an enterprise reference architecture aids an enterprise in its ability to understand its structure and processes. Similar to a computer architecture, the enterprise architecture is comprised of several views. The enterprise architecture should provide activity, organizational, business rule (information), resource, and process views of an organization."

"Enterprise engineering is... the art of understanding , defining, specifying, analysing and implementing business processes for the enterprise entire life cycle, so that the enterprise can achieve its objectives, be cost-effective, and be more competitive in its market environment."

"Enterprises are rather complex systems which have to be managed for their internal affairs, but more importantly for the many relations to the different environments in which they are operating. Today, these environments are changing much more rapidly and the need for relevant information becomes of paramount importance in the decision making processes at all levels of enterprise management. Fluctuations in market demands, technology evolution and changing regulations require very flexible enterprise operations, capable of reacting to those changes. These reactions must be based on relevant and up-to-date information which must be supported by new decision support technology. The challenges in decision support concern the identification of relevant information, easy access and intelligent use of this information. Building and maintaining the enterprise knowledge base and enabling its efficient use for decision support are major tasks of enterprise engineering."

"Enterprise engineering is an integrated set of disciplines for building an enterprise, its processes, and systems."

"Enterprise engineering is an emerging discipline that studies enterprises from an engineering perspective. The first paradigm of this discipline is that enterprises are purposefully designed and implemented systems. Consequently, they can be re-designed and re-implemented if there is a need for change. The second paradigm of enterprise engineering is that enterprises are social systems. This means that the system elements are social individuals, and that the essence of an enterprise's operation lies in the entering into and complying with commitments between these social individuals."

"Martin's changemaker is the "Enterprise Engineer," who is an expert on what changes work in organizations. Enterprise Engineers need training to understand the mechanisms underlying corporate processes and an in-depth expertise in the family of change methods. Steeped in study of all methods, the Enterprise Engineer's skill is formidable."

"Enterprise Engineering is based on the belief that an enterprise, as any other complex system can be designed or improved in an orderly fashion thus giving a better overall result than ad hoc organisation and design."

"In enterprise modelling, we want to define the actions performed within an enterprise, and define constraints for plans and schedules which are constructed to satisfy the goals of the enterprise. This leads to the following set of informal competency questions:"

"Enterprise operation efficiency is seriously constrained by the inability to provide the right information, in the right place, at the right time. In spite of significant advances in technology it is still difficult to access information used or produced by different applications due to the hardware and software incompatibilities of manufacturing and information processing equipment. But it is this information and operation knowledge which makes up most of the business value of the enterprise and which enables it to complete in the market place. Therefore, sufficient and timely information access is a prerequisite for its efficient use in the operation of enterprises... The Open System Architecture for CIM... CIMOSA concepts provide operation structuring bases on cooperating processes. Enterprise operations are represented in terms of functionality and dynamic behavior (control flow). Information needed and produced, as well as resources and organisational aspects relevant in the course of the operation are modelled in the process model. However, the different aspects may be viewed separately for additional structuring and detailing during the enterprise engineering process."

"In the early ‘80’s, there was little interest in the idea of Enterprise Reengineering or and the use of formalisms and models was generally limited to some aspects of application development within the Information Systems community. The subject of "architecture" was acknowledged at that time, however, there was little definition to support the concept. This lack of definition precipitated the initial investigation that ultimately resulted in the "Framework for Information Systems Architecture." Although from the outset, it was clear that it should have been referred to as a "Framework for Enterprise Architecture," that enlarged perspective could only now begin to be generally understood as a result of the relatively recent and increased, worldwide focus on Enterprise "engineering.""

"Various perspectives exist in an enterprise, such as efficiency, quality, and cost. Any system for enterprise engineering must be capable of representing and managing these different perspectives in a well-defined way."

"The enterprise engineer must be a leader, a designer, and a synthesizer. He is a doer. He understands theory as a guide to practice. He must concern himself with human organization because the pace and success of technology are becoming more dependent on interaction with the social system and less on scientific discovery. In private as well as public research and development, such men must find ways to reverse the deterioration of ethics and efficiency. They will strengthen the information links between physical design and the public so that technology can better serve society. In the public sector they must show the level of wisdom and leadership that can co-ordinate great engineering projects with politics. They will recognise that informing the public and becoming a nucleus for crystallising public opinion is even more important in many programmes than is the underlying science."

"Professor Forrester told the National Academy of Engineering this fall, the "enterprise engineer," cast in the mold of the "professional engineer of folklore," is needed now more than ever before "to resynthesize the fragments caused by the specialization of other man"."

"Enterprise Engineering is defined as that body of knowledge, principles, and practices having to do with the analysis, design, implementation and operation of an enterprise. In a continually changing and unpredictable competitive environment, the Enterprise Engineer addresses a fundamental question: “how to design and improve all elements associated with the total enterprise through the use of engineering and analysis methods and tools to more effectively achieve its goals and objectives”..."

"A major change is occurring in the nature of work and the way that organizations relate to a rapidly changing environment. Many enterprises (and management teams) face obsolescence because of their inability to respond and adapt to this new situation. Enterprises can adapt if top management designs an appropriate information infrastructure, one which leverages human learning. A set of change processes, known as enterprise engineering, equips organizations to move towards such an infrastructure."

"Enterprise engineering is rooted in both the organizational sciences and the information system sciences. In our current understanding, three concepts are paramount to the theoretical and practical pursuit of enterprise engineering: enterprise ontology, enterprise architecture, and enterprise governance."

"Mechanical engineering is a major area of engineering. Mechanical engineering design, or mechanical design in short, refers to the design of devices, products, systems, or processes of a mechanical nature."