5. Industrialization – Investment – Industrial engineering revisited

5.1 Industrial engineering

Industrial engineering is the set of activities whose aim is to make a physical investment, i.e. to transform financial resources into a work or a piece of equipment, be it a bridge, a factory, a building or an aircraft. It is based on research results, studies and concepts, and involves a wide range of skills and professions.

This is the domain of Project Management, where a project is defined as a specific, well-defined activity (scope), a single piece of work with a beginning and an end. A project is made up of a number of interactive tasks, carried out in a logical order and involving the project team over a given period of time. The notions of "owner", "contractor" and "functional specifications" (CdCF) are unavoidable but sometimes...