Historical industrial roots of engineering and management: from the organization of work in the factory to the management of complex systems

As early as after World War II, the increasing responsibilities gradually attributed to engineers in an industrial context - also behind the push coming from excellent examples found at large North American and European educational institutions - had made the need felt in Italy to integrate the traditional curriculum of industrial engineers with elements of Economics and Business Management. The activation of the University Degree in Engineering and Management, which took place in the last two decades of the last century at Italian universities, rewarded by the growing attention of companies in every sector and the preferential choice of young people, therefore stands to represent one of the most successful examples in the history of innovations introduced in university programs. It is not always recognized that, since the advent of the industrial era in the 19th century, the history of management has been written everywhere by excellent figures of industrial engineers. Yet, despite this historical connotation of the engineer working in business management, the not-everywhere-balanced evolution of academic institutions has sometimes come to produce an imbalance in the educational mix offered through the Engineering and Management program, giving an excessive relevance to disciplines in the area of economics and finance at the expense of other inescapable educational occurrences. In this regard, it should be noted that the very invasiveness of the verbal image of "industry" - which we find in expressions such as hospitality industry, agricultural industry, entertainment industry, healthcare industry, and others - makes a recognition, if anything, to the success of the typical engineering approach, pioneered in the manufacturing industry, when extended to the most varied fields of economic activity. This article aims to trace the historical "industrial" roots of the Engineering and Management programs, reaffirming the educational centrality of disciplines related to operations management, manufacturing technologies, and industrial automation, leading to the production of goods and services of primary interest to human society.