Frederick Winslow Taylor Essay Example for Free

Frederick Winslow Taylor Essay Frederick Winslow Taylor (March 20, 1856 – March 21, 1915) was an American mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency.[1] He is regarded as the father of scientific management and was one of the first management consultants.[2] Taylor was one of the intellectual leaders of the Efficiency Movement and his ideas, broadly conceived, were highly influential in the Progressive Era. or passed the Harvard entrance examinations with honors. However, due allegedly to rapidly deteriorating eyesight, Taylor chose quite a different path. Instead of attending Harvard, Taylor became an apprentice patternmaker and machinist, gaining shop-floor experience at Enterprise Hydraulic Works in Philadelphia (a pump-manufacturing company whose proprietors were friends of the Taylor family). He left his apprenticeship for six months and represented a group of New England machine-tool manufacturers at Philadelphias centennial exposition. Taylor finished his four-year apprenticeship and in 1878 became a machine-shop laborer at Midvale Steel Works. At Midvale, he was quickly promoted to time clerk, journeyman machinist, gang boss over the lathe hands, machine shop foreman, research director, and finally chief engineer of the works (while maintaining his position as machine shop foreman). Taylors fast promotions probably reflected not only his talent but also his familys relationship with Edward Clark, part owner of Midvale Steel. (Edward Clarks son Clarence Clark, who was also a manager at Midvale Steel, married Taylors sister.) Early on at Midvale, working as a laborer and machinist, Taylor recognized that workmen were not working their machines, or themselves, nearly as hard as they could (which at the time was called soldiering) and that this resulted in high labor costs for the company. When he became a foreman he expected more output from the workmen and in order to determine how much work should properly be expec ted he began to study and analyze the productivity of both the men and the machines (although the word productivity was not used at the time, and the applied science of productivity had not yet been developed). His focus on the human component of production eventually became Scientific Management, while the focus on the machine component led to his famous metal-cutting and materials innovations. While Taylor worked at Midvale, he and Clarence Clark won the first tennis doubles tournament in the 1881 US National Championships, the precursor of the US Open.[1] Taylor became a student of Stevens Institute of Technology, studying via correspondence[5] and obtaining a degree in mechanical engineering in 1883. On May 3, 1884, he married Louise M. Spooner of Philadelphia. From 1890 until 1893 Taylor worked as a general manager and a consulting engineer to management for the Manufacturing Investment Company of Philadelphia, a company that operated large paper mills in Maine and Wisconsin. He spent time as a plant manager in Maine. In 1893, Taylor opened an independent consulting practice in Philadelphia. His business card read Consulting Engineer Systematizing Shop Management and Manufacturing Costs a Specialty. Through these consulting experiences, Taylor perfected his management system. In 1898 he joined Bethlehem Steel in order to solve an expensive machine-shop capacity problem. As a result, he and Maunsel White, with a team of assistants, developed high speed steel, paving the way for greatly increased mass production. Taylor was forced to leave Bethlehem Steel in 1901 after discord with other managers. After leaving Bethlehem Steel, Taylor focused the rest of his career on publicly promoting his management and machining methods through lecturing, writing, and consulting. In 1910, owing to the Eastern Rate Case, Frederick Winslow Taylor and his Scientific Management methodologies become famous worldwide. In 1911, Taylor introduced his The Principles of Scientific Management paper to the American mechanical engineering society, eight years after his Shop Management paper. On October 19, 1906, Taylor was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Science by the University of Pennsylvania.[6] Taylor eventually became a professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.[7] In early spring of 1915 Taylor caught pneumonia and died, one day after his fifty-ninth birthday, on March 21, 1915. He was buried in West Laurel Hill Cemetery, in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. Work Taylor was a mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. Taylor is regarded as the father of scientific management, and was one of the first management consultants and director of a famous firm. In Peter Druckers description, Frederick W. Taylor was the first man in recorded history who deemed work deserving of systematic observation and study. On Taylors scientific management rests, above all, the tremendous surge of affluence in the last seventy-five years which has lifted the working masses in the developed countries well above any level recorded before, even for the well-to-do. Taylor, though the Isaac Newton (or perhaps the Archimedes) of the science of work, laid only first foundations, however. Not much has been added to them since – even though he has been dead all of sixty years.[8] Taylors scientific management consisted of four principles: 1.Replace rule-of-thumb work methods with methods based on a scientific study of the tasks. 2.Scientifically select, train, and develop each employee rather than passively leaving them to train themselves. 3.Provide Detailed instruction and supervision of each worker in the performance of that workers discrete task (Montgomery 1997: 250). 4.Divide work nearly equally between managers and workers, so that the managers apply scientific management principles to planning the work and the workers actually perform the tasks. Future US Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis coined the term scientific management in the course of his argument for the Eastern Rate Case before the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1910. Brandeis argued that railroads, when governed according to Taylors principles, did not need to raise rates to increase wages. Taylor used Brandeiss term in the title of his monograph The Principles of Scientific Management, published in 1911. The Eastern Rate Case propelled Taylors ideas to the forefront of the management agenda. Taylor wrote to Brandeis I have rarely seen a new movement started with such great momentum as you have given this one. Taylors approach is also often referred to as Taylors Principles, or, frequently disparagingly, as Taylorism. Managers and workers Taylor had very precise ideas about how to introduce his system: It is only through enforced standardization of methods, enforced adoption of the best implements and working conditions, and enforced cooperation that this faster work can be assured. And the duty of enforcing the adoption of standards and enforcing this cooperation rests with management alone.[9] Workers were supposed to be incapable of understanding what they were doing. According to Taylor this was true even for rather simple tasks. I can say, without the slightest hesitation, Taylor told a congressional committee, that the science of handling pig-iron is so great that the man who is physically able to handle pig-iron and is sufficiently phlegmatic and stupid to choose this for his occupation is rarely able to comprehend the science of handling pig-iron.[10] Taylor believed in transferring control from workers to management. He set out to increase the distinction between mental (planning work) and manual labor (executing work). Detailed plans specifying the job, and how it was to be done, were to be formulated by management and communicated to the workers.[11] The introduction of his system was often resented by workers and provoked numerous strikes. The strike at Watertown Arsenal led to the congressional investigation in 1912. Taylor believed the laborer was worthy of his hire, and pay was linked to productivity. His workers were able to earn substantially more than those under conventional management,[12] and this earned him enemies among the owners of factories where scientific management was not in use. Propaganda techniques Taylor promised to reconcile labor and capital. With the triumph of scientific management, unions would have nothing left to do, and they would have been cleansed of their most evil feature: the restriction of output. To underscore this idea, Taylor fashioned the myth that there has never been a strike of men working under scientific management, trying to give it credibility by constant repetition. In similar fashion he incessantly linked his proposals to shorter hours of work, without bothering to produce evidence of Taylorized firms that reduced working hours, and he revised his famous tale of Schmidt carrying pig iron at Bethlehem Steel at least three times, obscuring some aspects of his study and stressing others, so that each successive version made Schmidts exertions more impressive, more voluntary and more rewarding to him than the last. Unlike [Harrington] Emerson, Taylor was not a charlatan, but his ideological message required the suppression of all evidence of workers dissent, of coercion, or of any human motives or asp irations other than those his vision of progress could encompass.[13] Management theory Taylor thought that by analyzing work, the One Best Way to do it would be found. He is most remembered for developing the stopwatch time study, which combined with Frank Gilbreths motion study methods later becomes the field of time and motion study. He would break a job into its component parts and measure each to the hundredth of a minute. One of his most famous studies involved shovels. He noticed that workers used the same shovel for all materials. He determined that the most effective load was 21 ½ lb, and found or designed shovels that for each material would scoop up that amount. He was generally unsuccessful in getting his concepts applied and was dismissed from Bethlehem Steel. Nevertheless, Taylor was able to convince workers who used shovels and whose compensation was tied to how much they produced to adopt his advice about the optimum way to shovel by breaking the movements down into their component elements and recommending better ways to perform these movements. It was largely through the efforts of his disciples (most notably H.L. Gantt) that industry came to implement his ideas. Moreover, the book he wrote after parting company with Bethlehem Steel, Shop Management, sold well. Relations with ASME Taylors own written works were designed for presentation to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). These include Notes on Belting (1894), A Piece-Rate System (1895), Shop Management (1903), Art of Cutting Metals (1906), and The Principles of Scientific Management (1911). Taylor was president of the ASME from 1906 to 1907. While president, he tried to implement his system into the management of the ASME but was met with much resistance. He was only able to reorganize the publications department and then only partially. He also forced out the ASMEs long-time secretary, Morris L. Cooke, and replaced him with Calvin W. Rice. His tenure as president was trouble-ridden and marked the beginning of a period of internal dissension within the ASME during the Progressive Age.[14] In 1911, Taylor collected a number of his articles into a book-length manuscript which he submitted to the ASME for publication. The ASME formed an ad hoc committee to review the text. The committee included Taylor allies such as James Mapes Dodge and Henry R. Towne. The committee delegated the report to the editor of the American Machinist, Leon P. Alford. Alford was a critic of the Taylor system and the report was negative. The committee modified the report slightly, but accepted Alfords recommendation not to publish Taylors book. Taylor angrily withdrew the book and published Principles without ASME approval.[15] Taylor published the trade book himself in 1912. Patents Taylor authored 42 patents.[16] Taylors influence United States One of Carl G. Barths speed-and-feed slide rules. A Gantt chart. †¢Carl G. Barth helped Taylor to develop speed-and-feed-calculating slide rules to a previously unknown level of usefulness. Similar aids are still used in machine shops today. Barth became an early consultant on scientific management and later taught at Harvard. †¢H. L. Gantt developed the Gantt chart, a visual aid for scheduling tasks and displaying the flow of work. †¢Harrington Emerson introduced scientific management to the railroad industry, and proposed the dichotomy of staff versus line employees, with the former advising the latter. †¢Morris Cooke adapted scientific management to educational and municipal organizations. †¢Hugo Mà ¼nsterberg created industrial psychology. †¢Lillian Gilbreth introduced psychology to management studies. †¢Frank Gilbreth (husband of Lillian) discovered scientific management while working in the construction industry, eventually developing motion studies independently of Taylor. These logically complemented Taylors time studies, as time and motion are two sides of the efficiency improvement coin. The two fields eventually became time and motion study. †¢Harvard University, one of the first American universities to offer a graduate degree in business management in 1908, based its first-year curriculum on Taylors scientific management. †¢Harlow S. Person, as dean of Dartmouths Amos Tuck School of Administration and Finance, promoted the teaching of scientific management. †¢James O. McKinsey, professor of accounting at the University of Chicago and founder of the consulting firm bearing his name, advocated budgets as a means of assuring accountability and of measuring performance. France In France, Le Chatelier translated Taylors work and introduced scientific management throughout government owned plants during World War I. This influenced the French theorist Henri Fayol, whose 1916 Administration Industrielle et Gà ©nà ©rale emphasized organizational structure in management. In the classic General and Industrial Management Fayol wrote that Taylors approach differs from the one we have outlined in that he examines the firm from the bottom up. he starts with the most elemental units of activity – the workers actions – then studies the effects of their actions on productivity, devises new methods for making them more efficient, and applies what he learns at lower levels to the hierarchy[17] He suggests that Taylor has staff analysts and advisors working with individuals at lower levels of the organization to identify the ways to improve efficiency. According to Fayol, the approach results in a negation of the principle of unity of command.[18] Fayol criticized Taylors functional management in this way: In Shop Management, Taylor said[19]  « the most marked outward characteristics of functional management lies in the fact that each workman, instead of coming in direct contact with the management at one point only, receives his daily orders and help from eight different bosses these eight were (1) route clerks, (2) instruction card men, (3) cost and time clerks, (4) gang bosses, (5) speed bosses, (6) inspectors, (7) repair bosses, and the (8) shop disciplinarian.  »[19] This, Fayol said, was an unworkable situation, and that Taylor must have somehow reconciled the dichotomy in some way not described in Taylors works. Switzerland In Switzerland, the American Edward Albert Filene established the International Management Institute to spread information about management techniques. USSR In the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin was very impressed by Taylorism, which he and Joseph Stalin sought to incorporate into Soviet manufacturing. Taylorism and the mass production methods of Henry Ford thus became highly influential during the early years of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless [] Frederick Taylors methods have never really taken root in the Soviet Union.[20] The voluntaristic approach of the Stakhanovite movement in the 1930s of setting individual records was diametrically opposed to Taylors systematic approach and proved to be counter-productive.[21] The stop-and-go of the production process – workers having nothing to do at the beginning of a month and storming during illegal extra shifts at the end of the month – which prevailed even in the 1980s had nothing to do with the successfully taylorized plant s e.g., of Toyota which are characterized by continuous production processes (heijunka) which are continuously improved (kaizen).[22] The easy availability of replacement labor, which allowed Taylor to choose only first-class men, was an important condition for his systems success.[23] The situation in the Soviet Union was very different. Because work is so unrhythmic, the rational manager will hire more workers than he would need if supplies were even in order to have enough for storming. Because of the continuing labor shortage, managers are happy to pay needed workers more than the norm, either by issuing false job orders, assigning them to higher skill grades than they deserve on merit criteria, giving them loose piece rates, or making what is supposed to be incentive pay, premia for good work, effectively part of the normal wage. As Mary Mc Auley has suggested under these circumstances piece rates are not an incentive wage, but a way of justifying giving workers whatever they should be getting, no matter what their pay is supposed to be according to the official norms.[24] Taylor and his theories are also refe renced (and put to practice) in the 1921 dystopian novel We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. Canada In the early 1920s, the Canadian textile industry was re-organized according to scientific management principles. In 1928, workers at Canada Cotton Ltd. in Hamilton, Ontario went on strike against newly introduced Taylorist work methods. Also, Henry Gantt, who was a close associate of Taylor, re-organized the Canadian Pacific Railway.[25] With the prevalence of US branch plants in Canada and close economic and cultural ties between the two countries, the sharing of business practices, including Taylorism, has been common. Criticism of Taylor Management theorist Henry Mintzberg is highly critical of Taylor’s methods. Mintzberg states that an obsession with efficiency allows measureable benefits to overshadow less quantifiable social benefits completely, and social values get left behind.[26] Harry Bravermans work, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century, published in 1974 was critical of scientific management. This work pioneered the field of Labor Process Theory. Taylors methods have also been challenged by socialist intellectuals. The argument put forward relates to progressive defanging of workers in the workplace and the subsequent degradation of work as management, powered by capital, uses Taylors methods to render work repeatable, precise yet monotonous and skill-reducing.[27] James W. Rinehart argued that Taylors methods of transferring control over production from workers to management, and the division of labor into simple tasks, intensified the alienation of workers that had begun with the factory system of production around 1870-1890.[28] Tennis accomplishments Taylor was also an accomplished tennis player. Together with Clarence Clark he won the inaugural United States National tennis doubles championship at Newport Casino in 1881 defeating Alexander Van Rensselaer and Arthur Newbold in straight sets.[1]