Frederick Winslow Taylor

10 Key excerpts on "Frederick Winslow Taylor"

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  Management and Military Studies

  Classical and Current Foundations

  • Joseph Soeters(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  2

  Frederick Taylor

  Standardized work division, calculation and efficiency, criticism and new developments

  This chapter focuses on the management ideas that were developed by the American Frederick Taylor. He was a mechanical engineer and an efficiency expert living at the time that industrial production expanded rapidly over the country. Frederick Taylor (1856–1915) was interested in seeking the most efficient ways of producing in large-scale industrial organizations. Efficiency refers to the ratio between input and output, between costs and returns. Taylor promoted the idea that management should be approached scientifically, and should not rely on traditional, habitual knowledge and ways of doing. He was influential in industries throughout the country, and from there on also in the military and in the military industry.

  At the same time, criticism rose among employees who feared the loss of jobs as well as academics who expressed concerns about the collective inefficiency of efficiently organized individual jobs. Do we need complex organizations with simple jobs or simple organizations with complex jobs? This discussion for sure impacts on the military, and it has done so throughout history, even centuries before Taylor was born. Actually, these developments and discussions pertaining to industries and service organizations are completely interwoven with military thinking and action, in previous times as much as nowadays.

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  Management

  • Richard L. Daft; Alan Benson; Brian Henry, Richard Daft, Alan Benson, Brian Henry(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  Scientific management Scientific management emphasizes scientifically determined jobs and management practices as the way to improve efficiency and labour productivity. In the late 1800s, a young engineer named Frederick Winslow Taylor proposed that workers ‘could be retooled like machines, their physical and mental gears recalibrated for better productivity’. 15 Taylor insisted that improving productivity meant that management itself would have to change and, further, that the manner of change could be determined only by scientific study; hence, the label scientific management emerged. Taylor suggested that decisions based on rules of thumb and tradition be replaced with precise procedures developed after careful study of individual situations. 16 In 1898, Taylor observed activities at a Bethlehem Steel plant including the unloading of iron from railcars and the reloading of finished steel. Taylor calculated that with correct movements, tools and sequencing, each worker could be capable of loading 47.5 tonnes per day instead of the then current 12.5 tonnes. He also worked out an incentive system that paid each man $1.85 a day for meeting the new standard, an increase from the previous rate of $1.15. After his proposals were implemented, productivity at Bethlehem Steel shot up overnight. Although known as the father of scientific management , Taylor was not alone in this area. Henry Gantt (1861–1919), an associate of Taylor’s, developed the Gantt chart , a bar graph that measured planned and completed work along each stage of production by time elapsed. Two other important pioneers in this area were the husband-and-wife team of Frank B. and Lillian M. Gilbreth. Frank B. Gilbreth (1868– 1924) pioneered time and motion studies and arrived at many of his management techniques independent of Taylor. He stressed efficiency and was known for his quest for the one best way to do work.

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  Communication in Modern Social Ordering

  History and Philosophy

  • Kai Eriksson(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Continuum

    (Publisher)

  72 Frederick Taylor, Shop Management , in Scientific Management: Comprising Shop Management, The Principles of Scientific Management, Testimony Before the Special House Committee , ed. Kenneth Thompson, vol. I of The Early Sociology of Management and Organizations (London: Routledge, 2003), 64, 107, 109–10, 127–8. 73 Taylor, Scientific Management , 69; see also Robert Kanigel, The One Best Way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency (London: Abacus, 1997), 334. men, unquestionably exist, and when clearly defined are of great value as a guide in dealing with men.” 74 These laws were not, however, imposed on action from above, as a principle foreign to it, but stemmed from the specific procedures and motions needed in a given task. So the law, gathering communicative relations and events under one conceptual whole, was fundamentally a law derived from the activity in question. Seen from the point of view of the constitutive — that is, ontological dimension of communication — Taylorism is to be understood not only as a theory of work management but also, and perhaps more important, as a way of thinking about communication within the circumstances of modern industrial society. However unusual it might seem to make Taylor a communication theoretician, here I am examining his thinking in terms of the conditions of communication. Although he was not the only theorist to incorporate communication into a production system as a distinct category, Taylor is, however, the best representative of the rationalization efforts of the early twentieth century, the object and means of which communication increasingly became too. Second, by systematizing the diverse attempts made at the time toward a more rational, foreseeable system, the model constructed by Taylor provided a general comprehension of how social communication should be organized according to rational laws.

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  Marketing Skills in Practice

  Developing a Successful Marketing Career

  • Linda Anne Barkas, Yvonne Dixon-Todd(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The management process is described by Witzel (2022, p. 1) as ‘the coordination and direction of activities of oneself and others towards some particular end’. The management process may sound simple, but it is an exceedingly complex process that has been studied for many years. Early studies on improving processes started in engineering in the early twentieth century with research called ‘ scientific management’, such as Frederick Taylor’s seminal work The Principles of Scientific Management (1947). He was the first to really study the nature of work (Drucker, 1974). Frederick Winslow Taylor was an American Quaker engineer who invented scientific management, which was the foundation of later work in time and motion studies. He began work as a labourer in the steel industry, progressing to chief engineer, whereby he started breaking down tasks into small sections, utilising a stopwatch to see how long things took and whether or not, with various adjustments, tasks could be done more efficiently. His study ‘ scientific management’ was the forerunner to time and motion studies developed by Frank and Lillian Gilbreth (1917). In the early 1900s, Henry Ford also applied standardised processes to the assembly line at the Ford Motor plant (Jenson, 1989). This has become known as ‘ Fordism’ as a management style, a term used by several management theorists. While effective results were demonstrated, the impact was not so good on people, as the tasks were repetitive, with a lack of human interaction

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  Re-Tayloring Management

  Scientific Management a Century On

  • Leonard Holmes, Christina Evans(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  This experience and his subsequent work as a freelance consulting engineer between 1890 and 1898 and as a manager at the Bethlehem Steel Works between 1898 and 1900 provided the raw material for his first paper on piece rate systems and his first book, Shop Management (Taylor 1895, 1904). In 1901, Taylor set up as a consultant again, and over the next fourteen years he and his associates introduced 'scientific management' in 181 factories and other large commercial organizations (Nelson 1992). Over this period, Taylor and his colleagues developed and described the practices which would become known as 'shop management' and then 'scientific management' and ultimately 'Taylorism'. Members of Taylor's entourage and the growing scientific management movement included industrialists like James Dodge, as well as the consultants Carl Barth, Morris Cooke, Frank Gilbreth, H.K. Hathaway, Robert Kent, Conrad Lauer and Dwight Merrick (Urwick 1949). Many of these individuals, like Taylor, had served apprenticeships and worked their way up into management positions within one or more companies, many of them aided by subsequent study at one of the growing number of universities and colleges. The experiences of these individuals in large industrial concerns formed the basis for the talks, papers and books that they produced. This combination of a number of colleagues writing up established practice, developing new ways of working and consulting with other companies meant that Taylorism had many sources and contributors. As Lyndall Urwick, the most influential champion of Taylorism in the UK, commented in the late 1940s: 'scientific management' [Taylorism] was not an invention, a new idea which occurred suddenly to the fertile brains of F.W. Taylor and his colleagues. It was merely the codification and restatement in coherent and logical form of the essence of a host of practices which had been developing in the best managed factories over a very long period

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  The Science of Labour and its Organization

  • Josefa Ioteyko(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  Hence the necessity for having an office for the especial study of the best methods of working. These methods should be known to the men. Therefore, it is also necessary to have another office for the training of overseers capable of guaranteeing this desideratum. F. W. Taylor (born in 1856, died in 1915), was descended from a Philadelphia family; he was, by turns, apprentice, labourer, master mechanic, then director of a training college, and finally, in 1884, Chief Engineer of the Midvale factories. He took his diploma at the Stevens Institute of Technology. In 1890, he left the Midvale steelworks to become General Director of the Manufacturing Investment Company which manufactured mills for the great chemical industries. He left this Company in 1893, and dedicated the whole of his time to the introduction of his system of organisation into various industries. F. W. Taylor, says M. Le Châtelier, was not only a genius, but he was a man of a noble nature, faithful to his friends, devoted to the public good, and in great sympathy with the aspirations of the working classes. Since Taylor’s death, an International Committee has been formed for continuing the struggle on behalf of the American engineer’s ideas. The active members of the committee are: Mr. Carl Barth, consulting engineer; Mr. Norris Cooke, director of public works in the city of Philadelphia; Mr. Dodge, president of the Link Belt Co. of Philadelphia, whose factories are entirely reorganised on Taylor’s plans; Mr. Hathaway, director of the Tabor Manufacturing Co., Philadelphia; one of the first factories to adopt Taylor’s methods, and where those engineers, who go to the United States to study Taylor’s system, are sent. The secretary of the committee is Miss Frances Mitchell, Boxly, Highland Station, Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, U.S. Let us now examine Taylor’s system closely, basing our enquiries on those of M. Le Châtelier

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  Facilitating the Socio-Economic Approach to Management

  • Henri Savall, John Conbere, Alla Heorhiadi(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Information Age Publishing

    (Publisher)

  Facilitating the Socioeconomic Approach to Management, pages 19–32 Copyright © 2014 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. 19 CHAPTER 3 TAYLOR’S ILLUSION An Historical Account of the Progression of the “TFW Virus” Alanna G. Kennedy CONFERENCE REMARKS: Chapter Prologue Alanna Kennedy I was interested in comparing SEAM with the classic factory systems of Frederick Taylor and the more contemporary Japanese lean factory system. To address the issue, I looked at the genesis of these approaches and also reflected on Vincent Cristallini’s paper about how the Taylor-Fayol-Weber “virus” contagion spreads. Basically, Taylorism’s principles can be summarized as the search and analysis for the “one best way.” Taylor was notorious for analyzing the best way to perform a manufacturing operation. This best way included the best materials, the best tools, the best machines and the best sequence of the work using the least amount of time. He diligently worked at perfecting this 20  A. G. KENNEDY concept throughout his career and it became the foundation of his book The Principles of Scientific Management. Taylor was born into a privileged Quaker family in Philadelphia. He ini- tially was fated to go to Harvard to study law, and he actually sat for and passed the entrance exams. But by that time, he had become an apprentice in a factory and discovered his passion for manufacturing. He thrived in his career. At age 20, he was a shop foreman. By the age of 30, he advanced to chief engineer and he was notoriously known as an efficiency expert by the age of 40. After the age of 40, he never charged a fee for his services. He dedicated his time to further develop and promote the principles of scien- tific management without financial reward. Taylor believed in the far reaching positive societal effects of his work. Business owners would be rewarded with increased profit and employees would have steady employment and be paid a fair wage.

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  The Rise and Fall of Management

  A Brief History of Practice, Theory and Context

  • Gordon Pearson(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The employer–employee relationship was always an important part of management’s responsibility. The potential for the strong employer to exploit the weak worker was apparent from the start of industrialization. Marx’s reference to the ‘negotiation’ between the labourer and ‘Mr Moneybags’, after which the latter was ‘smirking’ his satisfaction at the outcome, was theoretical rather than based on personal experience. It did not include any report on the actual negotiation, the act of stealing the surplus earned by the worker. Fred Taylor had no such qualms. His account was based on personal participation.

  Scientific Management

  The application of ‘science’ to management was timely as it coincided with the blossoming of various branches of natural science and scientific discovery and it was attractive since it appeared to depersonalize the potentially explosive employer–employee relationship. Taylor, a devoted Quaker, was focused on how to bring management and labour together in productive partnership from which both should gain.

  Kanigel’s biography of Taylor describes him as:

  ‘… the first efficiency expert, the original time-and-motion man. To organized labour, he was the soulless slave driver, out to destroy the workingman’s health and rob him of his manhood. To the bosses, he was an eccentric and a radical, raising the wages of common labourers by a third, paying college boys to click stopwatches. To him and his friends, he was a misunderstood visionary, possessor of the one best way that, under the banner of science, would confer prosperity on worker and boss alike, abolishing the ancient class hatreds.’3

  3 Kanigel, R., (1997 ), The One Best Way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency, London: Little, Brown & Company, p. 1.

  Taylorism, or scientific management, was concerned first and foremost with how business could survive, rather than with how to divide the spoils of industry. Taylor himself claimed that resolving the power struggle was the end to which efficiency was the means, not the other way round.

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  Contested Learning in Welfare Work

  A Study of Mind, Political Economy, and the Labour Process

  • Peter H. Sawchuk(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Towne and others within the ASME community of the period all the way back to Charles Babbage, Andrew Ure, and perhaps even Adam Smith. It was a system of thinking that eventually culminated in and was developed further by members of an off-shoot organization of ASME: the Taylor Society. 8 It seems clear from Taylor scholarship that its revolutionary nature primarily derived from its circulation of continually evolving, material techniques of management in relation to workers’ knowledge production capacities specifically. It is relevant to note that beyond Taylor’s (various sets of) principles, he included and subsumed many other elements of managerial practice. Indeed, many subsequent management practices have been mistakenly thought to represent a departure from his approach. Taylor incorporated elements of modern cost accounting systems. And although he bristled at management by incentive alone, throughout his writings inducements retained a relevant, if subordinate, role (Shop Management). Typically for- gotten, incentives were broadly conceived of by Taylor as not simply pay increases 9 but also promotion, shorter work hours, better surroundings, the intrinsic motivation of efficient work, and even notions of better human interrelations. Nor did Taylor eschew the powerful contributions of orga- nizational trust and commitment. He recognized the importance of such matters, though always within the confines of the Taylorist system. Importantly, Taylor recognized the successful application of his method of workplace change involved a two-front war. 10 In one sense, his was likely more a capitalist, as opposed to a managerialist, approach. That is, his system was designed to challenge the inherent capacities of worker self-management and knowledge-making as well as what he called the learn- ing, knowledge, and ordinary initiative of local management.

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  The Evolution of Management Thought

  • Daniel A. Wren, Arthur G. Bedeian(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  44 In what was called the rationalization movement, other firms such as Siemens, Borsig, Orsam, Daimler-Benz, and Bosch attempted to apply Taylor’s principles. The response of Ger- man trade unions was largely negative, as evidenced by strikes at Bosch in 1912 and 1913. After World War I, Germany took a nationalistic approach to scientific management by creating the Reichskuratorium für Wirtschaftlichkeit (RKW; roughly, National Productivity Board). The state-funded RKW was a clearinghouse for German academic and industry specialists to study and promote industrial efficiency during the interwar years of the Weimar Republic. 45 When Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists came to power, labor unions were disbanded and the RKW was used to control industrial practices. Thereafter, war, depression, and fascism shaped the course of scientific management in Germany. In Austria, Taylorism was first publically discussed in 1914 at the Österreichischer Ing- enieurund Architektenverein (Organization of Austrian Engineers and Architects). Discussions of Taylorism in both Germany and Austria were soon interrupted with the beginning of World War I in August 1914. 46 Following the war, however, these discussions resumed as Taylor–Zeitschrift, a journal devoted to Taylorism, was published in Austria from 1920 to 1929. 47 In 1896, the Russian-educated Polish engineer, Karol Adamiecki, developed a form of graphical analysis known as a “harmonogram” to solve production bottlenecks. Harmonograms charted the flow of work across a production process to minimize delays. Adamiecki’s harmono- grams had elements of Gantt’s charts but were also similar to a Program Evaluation and Review 39 Trevor Boyns, “Hans and Charles Renold: Entrepreneurs in the Introduction of Scientific Management Techniques in Brit- ain,” Management Decision 39(9) (2001), pp. 719–728. 40 Edward F. L. Brech, The Evolution of Modern Management, vol.

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