Abstract
The evolution of large artificial systems essentially underpins modern systems thinking and the ideas on complexity. A key contribution of industrial engineering to this intellectual process is the consideration of organizational problems and the development of the corresponding management technologies, eventually based on mathematical models. This kind of problems lie at the crossroads of engineering and the human and social sciences. From the first attempts to quantify labour and production, to 20th century operations research, an interdisciplinary evolution took place regarding ideas such as optimization, decision making, and control. Discussions on the use of quantitative and mathematical instruments in this context played an important role.
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Gasca, A.M. (2003). Early Approaches to the Management of Complexity in Engineering Systems. In: Benci, V., Cerrai, P., Freguglia, P., Israel, G., Pellegrini, C. (eds) Determinism, Holism, and Complexity. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-4947-2_32
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