The Department of Industrial Engineering at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, University in Zagreb, is the successor of the Department of Organization of the same faculty, and it has been operating under the current name since 1998. The faculty achieves its scientific, educational and professional activity within the scope of production engineering, the scientific field of mechanical engineering and the scientific field of technical science. First attempts of approaching complex issues in managing and optimising production and business developed at the Royal Technical College (1919 – 1926) in the form of courses introduced already in 1925: Managing and Operating a Factory, National Economy, Financial Sciences and Social Policies. Ing. Đuro Stipetić is considered the most instrumental person for the introduction of these courses. He was the founder of the Department of Naval Architecture at the Engineering and Naval Architecture Division of the Technical College and the first lecturer for the course Managing and Operating a Factory.
The next step in the development of the field was establishing the Department of Technology and Production Organization at the Engineering and Naval Architecture Faculty by prof. dr. sc. Ivo Hercigonja, who introduced several new courses, some of which, under the same or similar names, are still included in the syllabi of several FAMENA departments.
On the other side, at the Technical College in Zagreb, which was founded with the aim of educating highly qualified engineering professionals necessary for the development of industrial production, completely new scientific disciplines were introduced: technological processes design, maintenance, operational research, mathematical statistics, labour studies, operational preparation, production improvements, organization and arrangement in factories, control and quality management, company economics, labour psychophysiology, safety at work, material handling, etc.
Especially important for this development was prof. dr. sc. Aleksandar Đurašević (1922 – 1974), who founded the field known in developed industries of the Western world under the name industrial engineering. The introduction of completely new scientific disciplines from the business management and production system fields, strongly supported by methods of operational research, resulted in the creation the laboratory Computer Centre (established in 1973 as a part of the Department of Company Organisation), which was later, in 1974, incorporated into FAMENA’s shared services. It still operates as FAMENA’s Computer Centre.
Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering was awarded as an academic title for the first time in 1907 at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1948 the Institute of Industrial Engineering was founded in the USA. In Europe the term industrial engineering appeared in 1948 as well, and in 2007 FAMENA’s first student finished a five-year graduate study in the field of industrial engineering.
