A Master Program in Services Engineering and Management at the University of Porto

The education of professional engineers has been mainly oriented towards the requirements of industry, although many graduates will start and end up working in service organizations. Services always involve interaction, either directly between people or using machines. Most services now require the use of technology, including self service machines, Internet and mobile equipments and may involve complex social and organizational issues. Although engineering programs have evolved in order to accommodate changes in the economy, new proposals must be taken into new graduate and postgraduate education.

This paper proposes MESG¹, a Master program in Services Engineering and Management compatible with the Bologna European framework. It is still a program to educate professional engineers, in the sense that graduates will be prepared to Conceive, Design, Implement and Operate (CDIO) complex value-added engineering systems. But MESG has a strong emphasis on: (i) understanding the innovative technologies now required for service provision, (ii) understanding the functional and the experience requirements of people using services, and (iii) management of the service CDIO process and understanding its value. Knowledge and experience about people and about business, in social-organizational environments, are important components in the advanced education of service engineers and managers.