436-204 Engineering Economics and Statistical Applications

Credit Points:

Coordinator:

Prerequisite/s:

Timetable:

Contact:

Objectives:

Upon completion, the student should understand how engineers contribute to business and management, including costing and financial management. Students should have acquired a knowledge of how to measure economic performance of the people factor, be aware of competitive methods, be able to assess the value of a proposed equipment purchase and cost a design, and comprehend the principal ingredients required to manufacture and manage efficiently. Students will have extended their appreciation of statistical applications in the area of inference, linear progression, prediction, forecasting and analysis of variance to assist them in performance assessment, design of processes and process control, and the planning of experiments and project development. Thus they should be skilled in analysis and the determination of the significance of results obtained.

Content:

Supply and demand theory and theory of the firm, methods of competing and increasing gross margin, breakeven calculations, sources of income, capital and operating expenditure details. Preparation of budgets and performance measurements, profit and loss, balance sheet, funds movement and cash budget calculation. Organisation charts and corporate structure. The operation of service departments, decision making and personal communications. Costing of designs and services and criteria for equipment purchase. The place of management information systems, simulation and control charts in the operation of a firm. An introduction to prediction and forecasting, linear and multiple regression and the application of statistics to management and control of a firm. Analysis of variance both one way and two way, assuming normality-F tests and distribution free based on rank cases in each instance. Analysis of designed experiments and the testing of confidence intervals for significant effects. Statistical emphasis in these lectures is on the application of statistics to decision making within engineering economics, process and project control and manufacturing management.

Assessment: