Page 17 - Practical Control Engineering a Guide for Engineers, Managers, and Practitioners

Preface

ou may be an engineering student, a practicing engineer work-
ing with control engineers, or even a control engineer. But I am
Ygoing to assume that you are a manager.
Managers of control engineers sometimes have a difficult chal-
lenge. Many companies promote top managerial prospects laterally
into unfamiliar technical areas to broaden their outlook. A manager
in this situation often will have several process control engineers
reporting directly to her and she needs an appreciation for their
craft. Alternatively, technical project managers frequently supervise
the work of process control engineers on loan from a department
specializing in the field. This book is designed to give these manag-
ers insight into the work of the process control engineers working
for them. It can also give the student of control engineering an alter-
native and complementary perspective.
Consider the following scenario. A sharp control engineer, who
either works for you or is working on a project that you are managing,
has just started an oral presentation about his sophisticated approach
to solving a knotty control problem. What do you do? If you are a
successful manager, you have clearly convinced (perhaps without
foundation) many people of your technical competence so you can
probably ride through this presentation without jeopardizing your
managerial prestige. However, you will likely want to actually critique
his presentation carefully. This could be a problem since, being a
successful manager, you are juggling several technically diverse
balls in the air and haven't the time to research the technological
underpinnings of each. Furthermore, your formal educational
background may not be in control engineering. The above-mentioned
control engineer, embarking on his presentation, is probably quite
competent but perhaps he has been somewhat enthralled by the
elegance of his approach and has missed the forest for the trees (it
certainly happened to me many times over the years). You should be
able to ask some penetrating questions or make some key suggestions
that will get him on track and make him (and you) more successful.
Hopefully, you will pick up a few hints on the kind of questions to
ask while reading this book.

xvii