What books would an industrial engineer find it to be useful?

November 14, 2009 5:59 AM

Books recommendation for an industrial engineer

My friend is an industrial engineer who would like to read more "useful" non-fiction books.

I know she really like
The Toyota Way
The Machine That Changed the World

She also like a book about efficiently sorting boxes in a warehouse.

I already exhaustively searched thoroughly through ReadMe for similarly title, but have no luck.

Bonus: She will also be working in China next year.

So oh wise mefi please help her out!
Thank you for any suggestions!

posted by Carius to Writing & Language (13 answers total)

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, Alain de Botton.
posted by polyglot at 6:02 AM on November 14, 2009

How to Solve It: Modern Heuristics, Zbigniew Michalewicz and David B. Fogel

I thought this was an excellent overview of modern optimization techniques.
posted by wigner3j at 6:36 AM on November 14, 2009

My dad is an engineer and he loved, Infrastructure: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape by Brian Hayes.
posted by copystar at 8:49 AM on November 14, 2009

Henry Petroski wrote a number of books about engineering and design. His book To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design is a classic.

James Gordon is a very readable author on the subjects of materials (The New Science of Strong Materials or Why You Don't Fall through the Floor) and structures (Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down)

Your friend might also like Honda: The Man and His Machines although, to be honest, I haven't read it.
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 9:23 AM on November 14, 2009

Not a book but I am getting the documentary Objectified this holiday season for the industrial design engineer I know.
posted by headnsouth at 10:16 AM on November 14, 2009

Shop Class as Soulcraft.
posted by jeanmari at 10:33 AM on November 14, 2009

The Design of Everyday Things. It's about "interfaces" in a general sense: what makes everyday consumer products, software interfaces, etc. intuitive and easy to use.
posted by k. at 11:54 AM on November 14, 2009

Response by poster: Sorry I didn't make it clear, but her major is actually in industrial system engineering. I don't know would that make it difference.

Thanks for all the suggestions so far!
posted by Carius at 2:52 PM on November 14, 2009

John Gall's Systemantics. It's written tongue firmly in cheek but as with most humor it has large chunks of truth underlying it.

The Western Electric SQC Manual.

David Halberstam's The Reckoning.

Steven Levitt's Freakonomics. Though it may seem only tangentially related, the idea of systems doing unexpected things turns up a lot in this book.
posted by jet_silver at 10:30 PM on November 14, 2009

Controlling the Dragon: Confucian Engineers and the Yellow River in Late Imperial China? I haven't read it, but a friend mentioned it. It may be more about social history than engineering though, looking at the Amazon review.
posted by paduasoy at 4:27 PM on November 15, 2009

PS There is a cheaper paperback.
posted by paduasoy at 4:29 PM on November 15, 2009

Seconding just about anything by Henry Petroski, but if she liked "a book about efficiently sorting boxes in a warehouse", she'll probably love The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger.
posted by AsYouKnow Bob at 10:47 PM on November 15, 2009

A moment's thought reminds me that your friend might be the perfect reader for one of my favorite obscure books: The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society, which provides a wonderful historical survey of the problem.

To crib the product description at Amazon:

James Beniger traces the origin of the Information Society to major economic and business crises of the past century. In the United States, applications of steam power in the early 1800s brought a dramatic rise in the speed, volume, and complexity of industrial processes, making them difficult to control. Scores of problems arose: fatal train wrecks, misplacement of freight cars for months at a time, loss of shipments, inability to maintain high rates of inventory turnover. Inevitably the Industrial Revolution, with its ballooning use of energy to drive material processes, required a corresponding growth in the exploitation of information: the Control Revolution.

Between the 1840s and the 1920s came most of the important information-processing and communication technologies still in use today: telegraphy, modern bureaucracy, rotary power printing, the postage stamp, paper money, typewriter, telephone, punch-card processing, motion pictures, radio, and television. Beniger shows that more recent developments in microprocessors, computers, and telecommunications are only a smooth continuation of this Control Revolution. Along the way he touches on many fascinating topics: why breakfast was invented, how trademarks came to be worth more than the companies that own them, why some employees wear uniforms, and whether time zones will always be necessary.

It's twenty years old now, but it's interesting- and valuable enough that it's still in print.
posted by AsYouKnow Bob at 11:00 PM on November 15, 2009