Engineering is one of humanity's oldest activities and has provided many of the foundations on which it stands; the word itself is derived from a medieval Latin term applicable to the art of building and handling, WITS, that is, machines or devices.
The main acceptance of the modern term is both broader and more restricted than this. It is broader in that it includes an area of objects much more extensive than what the word "MACHINE" implies, and it is more restricted in that it distinguishes the functions of planning, design and specification, from those of manufacture, operation and maintenance.
Engineering deals not only with the project and the production of things that work, but also with their efficient operation, their production costs and their operating returns.
At the end of the 19th century, from the main physical branches of Engineering, a different discipline emerged for the first time that included man as a fundamental and important component of Industrial Engineering.
The engineering of human activity systems was born as a specialized field in workshops and factories, where its specialty was obvious and where it acquired the name of INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING.
Industrial Engineering provides a comprehensive vision of the company or institution, through the application of the General Systems Theory.
Every company or organization, considered as a system of human activity, can be described from the point of view of the flow and the process of different classes of elements.
The relative importance of each of them varies from one company to another; However, these elements intervene in practically all systems of human activity and, in each of them, Industrial Engineering intervenes in a particular way, in order to achieve optimal and efficient interaction within the system, as detailed below .