Questions: Questions about …

Question: What is the role of forecasting in engineering?
Answer: Forecasting is a systematic effort to anticipate future events or conditions. The most well known type of forecast may be that of the meteorologist who prepares daily weather forecasts that help us decide how to dress each day and whether to take an umbrella when we leave for work in the morning. Other common forecasts are those that anticipate future economic conditions, traffic patterns, and even the size and number of classrooms that will be needed in local schools.

An engineering manager must be concerned with both future markets and future technology and must therefore understand both sales and technological forecasting and the most important premise or assumption in planning and decision making is the future sales. almost everything for which we plan is based on this assumption.

Forecasting is the most important part of planning since the results of both lie in the future. The fierce nature of today’s competitive landscape has forced engineering organizations to operate more efficiently, not just on a day-to-day basis but also in planning for the future. Competitive advantage requires more than estimates and educated guesses. Even business expertise can take you only so far.

Engineering managers as well as other managers need a wide range of integrated capabilities for time series analysis and forecasting, econometrics and systems modeling, and financial analysis and reporting, with direct access to the internal/external commercial data warehouses/marts. With the power of an effective forecasting, managers can:

• Forecast demand related to their products and services.
• Decide staffing and resource needs.
• Predict customer and market behavior.
• Analyze investment options.
• Perform production plant site selection analysis.
• Make effective pricing decisions.
• Plan and understand markets for their products and services.

Things that can be forecast:

• Production levels.
• Technological developments.
• Needed manpower.
• Governmental regulations.
• Needed funds.
• Traning needs.
• Resource needs.
• Sales levels (The most critical information to forecast)

There are many techniques for forecasting. But all depend on two different types of data and/or information namely Qualitative Information, and Quantitative Information. They will be answered in detail in a different question.

Question: What are the areas of Management?

Answer: The areas of management are very huge as follows:-

• Administrative management
• Accounting management
• Agile management
• Arts management
• Association management
• Change management
• Communication management
• Constraint management
• Cost management
• Crisis management
• Critical management studies
• Customer relationship management
• Earned value management
• Educational management
• Effective Sales Management
• Enterprise management
• Environmental management
• Facility management
• Financial management
• Human Interaction management
• Human resources management
• Information technology management
• Integration management
• Interim management
• Inventory management
• Knowledge management
• Land management
• Leadership management
• Logistics management
• Marketing management
• Materials management
• Normative management
• Operations management
• Organization development
• Perception management
• Procurement management
• Program management
• Project management
• Process management
• Personal management
• Performance management
• Product management
• Public administration
• Public management
• Professional Sales Territory Management
• Quality management
• Records management
• Resource management
• Risk management
• Skills management
• Social entrepreneurship
• Spend management
• Strategic management
• Stress management
• Supply chain management
• Systems management
• Talent management
• Time management
• Telecommunication management

Question: What are the functions of the Management?

Answer: There are five functions to be performed by all types of managers. They vary qualitatively and quantitatively depending on the level of management. These functions are:-

• Planning
• Organizing
• Human Aspects of Organizing (aka Staffing)
• Leading and Motivation
• Controlling

Among these functions, the planning is the most important one.

Question: What is organizing?
Answer: As we know, the most important function of management is planning.
A key issue in accomplishing the goals identified in the planning process is structuring the work of the organization. Organizations are groups of people, with ideas and resources, working toward common goals. The purpose of the organizing function is to make the best use of the organization’s resources to achieve organizational goals. Output of organizing process is a set of organizational charts, organizational units. This process is also known as departmentalization.

Organizing can be viewed as the activities to collect and configure resources in order to implement plans in a highly effective and efficient fashion. Organizing is a broad set of activities, and often considered one of the major functions of management. Therefore, there are a wide variety of topics in organizing.

Question of Organizing Effectively in Management
Answer:  Effective organizing must first consider basic mission and long-range objectives established for the organization and the strategy. There are a lot of activities to be considered in organizing. A good manager starts with first the most inportant activities for success (aka key activities).
 

For an effective organizing, we must find these key activities. How do we find these key activities then?

You can ask three questions to identify key activities

1. In what area is excellence required to obtain the company’s objectives?
2. In what areas would lack of performance endanger the results?
3. What are the values that are truly important to us in this company?

Pareto analysis is a widely known method for such a process. Questions regarding Pareto analysis will be answered in another entry.