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De Re Metallica by Georgius Agricola was published in 1556. It is arguably the first Operations Management textbook. In it the author describes the management and technologies of the mining and metallurgical industry of the period. Using the translation by Herbert and Lou Hoover, this paper reviews the book both to compare it with contemporary writing on Operations Management in process industries, and to draw lessons from its impact. Many areas which we see as contemporary, such as ethical and environmental issues, are explicitly addressed in the book although with a different view of their impact than today. The book describes how the operations should be organized and managed, the role of the foreman, and the education and training required. The characteristics of process industries as described by Agricola are compared to modern views. The most enduring lesson from this remarkable book is the importance of systematic capture and dissemination of knowledge in Operations Management

A few years ago, I published a paper reviewing the history of Operations Management from Taylor to Toyota (Voss, 1995). Like many in the field, the work was based on the underlying assumption that Operations Management started with Frederick W. Taylor. However, as many have pointed out, it is possible to trace the field much further back. Wilson (1998) has plotted the history of JIT to about 1850; Schmenner (2001) and Lane (1934) have shown that the origins of mass production may have been in the Venice Arsenal which began production in 1104 and continued to 1797. It takes only a few seconds’ reflection to realize that, as a topic of concern, Operations Management (whatever its name) must have been around much longer. It is inconceivable that the pyramids were constructed without people who had substantial Operations Management skills. While history does not tell us whether the project was finished on time and to cost, the quality was clearly outstanding. The development of any field is an accumulation of knowledge and learning passed on by many means including word of mouth, craft and skill training, and internal documentation. One sign of the growing maturity of a field is the development of textbooks. This work will review what is arguably the first modern Operations Management textbook, De Re Metallica by Georgius Agricola published in 1556 ( Agricola, 1556 and Hoover and Hoover, 1950). It is possible that this early writing in the West was matched if not preceded by that in both the Arab world and China, but this is outside the scope of this paper. There are a number of important reasons why De Re Metallica is an interesting and relevant book to study. First, it brings together the earliest known set of systematic knowledge on the management of operations. Second, this textbook is also distinguished by being the first book of its kind to be based not just on the accumulated wisdom of previous writers, but also on sound empirical research. Finally, studies of the history of Operations Management have tended to trace it as a path from craft to mass production. This book focuses on process industries, and broadens our understanding of the history of the field. The paper will examine how Operations Management was viewed in the context of the mining and metals industry in the sixteenth century and relate this to the development of present day Operations Management. This analysis leads to speculation on what a medieval MBA curriculum might have looked like. Finally, conclusions are drawn about the evolution of the field.

Operations Management scholars have tended to dismiss anything before the 19th century. For example Davis et al. (2003) state that “Up through the end of the eighteenth century, … manufacturing, as we know it today, did not exist. Items were usually custom-made by skilled artisans. No two products were the same.” From our examination of Agricola's work as well as looking at the Venice Arsenal and the Spanish Royal Tobacco Factory, we can conclude that this is not so. It is clear that since the Middle Ages, and even before, the environment and nature of Operations Management has been well established. The need to manage people, process, technology, quality and cost had been explicitly recognized and addressed. These needs were examined at both an operational and manufacturing strategy level. Despite radical changes in technology, management science and human resource management, the concerns of operations managers have remained little changed over the centuries and the contingent nature of operations strategy was very evident four and a half centuries ago. A second conclusion is that Agricola led the way in developing knowledge based not just on learning by doing, but by scientific and empirical research and the challenging of existing wisdom. These values are as important today as they were then. Through careful documentation and codification of his knowledge he was able to let others, both academics and practitioners, share his research for 450 years. In contrast, the principles of mass production developed at Venice were lost as the knowledge was never systematized nor disseminated. Learning can be accompanied by forgetting. Agricola should not be compared to Taylor or Gilbreth, who changed the way that we viewed manufacturing, but to people such as Elwood Buffa who played a major role in the systematic capturing and dissemination of our knowledge of Operations Management (see Buffa, 1961, Buffa, 1965 and Buffa, 1969. A particular aspect from the legacy of Agricola – which we would do well to remember – is the multi-disciplinary nature of Operations Management: the manager requires a broad set of skills to be truly effective. And, there were then, as now, many unexplained phenomena. To Agricola these could be explained by the presence of demons. Today, we blame Murphy's law, though a few of us today may still resort to prayer and even fasting to address these persistent problems. However comforting it may seem to do so, we should not blame it on demons. We must use our intellectual and research skills to address the unexplained rather than give up or follow superstition.