Frederick Winslow Taylor

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Frederick Winslow Taylor

• 1856-1915

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Influences - Family History

• Father
• Pennsylvania Quaker family
• Lawyer
• Owned farms and properties
• Very Wealthy

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Influences - Family History

• Mother - Emily Winslow (Delano)
• New England Puritan Family
• Related to Franklin Delano Roosevelt
• Anti-slavery agitator
• Campaigner for womens rights
• Child rearing philosophy based on work, drill
  and discipline.
• Believe in definite instructions for Fred

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Influences

• Affluent family
• Attended Phillips Exeter Academy
• Destined for Harvard

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Influences - Early Work

• Started as an Apprentice
• 1878 - Midvale Steel as a Clerk
• Moved down the company ladder - laborer
• Role changed almost monthly
• Keeper of tools, assistant foreman, foreman,
  master mechanic, director of research, chief
  engineer of the plan
• 1880-1883 Engineering at Stephens Institute

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Influences - Other Than Mother

• Adam Smith - Process-driven model of management

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Tendencies

• Incredibly driven problem solver
• Inventor
• Taylor-White process for treating tool steel
• Spawned over forty patents
• Sportsman
• Passion for Order and Efficiency
• Persistent
• Personal Tendencies

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Accomplishments Theories

• 1889 - Bethlehem Steel Company
• Tried wide ranging changes
• Fired in 1901
• Experience laid the basis for theories of
  Scientific Management

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Scientific Management

• Workers engaged in soldiering
• Superiors had no idea how long a job should take
• No one thought to examine the nature of peoples
  work

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Scientific Management

• Armed with stopwatch, examined exactly what
  happened and how long it took
• Minute examination allows an observer to
  establish a best means of carrying out the job

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Scientific Management

• Workers would know what was expected
• Managers would know how much should be produced
• Reliable piecework rates, bonuses, penalties

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Scientific Management

• Quality of the work had to be stressed before
  striving for an increased Quantity of work
• Paid for performance, not attendance
• Advocated daily feedback
• Seventy five percent science and twenty five
  percent common sense

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Scientific Management Exercise

• Build 20 Pieces as specified
• Two Red 4x2
• Two Black 4x2, crosswise
• One White 2x2, on middle

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Scientific Management - Results

• Watertown Arsenal (Labor Cost Reductions)
• Packsaddle from 1.17 to .54
• 6 Gun from 10,229 to 6,950
• Typically, Schmidt increased production 400
  while receiving 60 more pay
• Often boosted production

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Scientific Management - Results

• 1910 - Harrington Emerson claimed the railroads
  could save 1 Million per day
• Immediate result was a dramatic cut in the cost
  of manufactured goods
• Potentially allowed for an increase in wages
• Also resulted in crude reductions in employee
  numbers

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Frederick Taylor - Contributions

• Invented Management as a Science
• Established the job of management as measurement
• Created middle management
• Intended SM to cover the whole organization
• First management consultant (Consultant to
  Management)

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Frederick Taylor - Recap

• Earned approximately 50,000 per year from 1900
  to 1911 from consulting
• Had three maids, estate superintendent, cook,
  coachman and yard laborers
• Taught in France and Germany
• 1910 - refused his share of his fathers 900,000
  estate
• 1915 - Taylors estate worth 700,000
• Died after a lecture tour in Cleveland

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Frederick Taylor - Supporters

• First International Management Theory
• Japanese
• Lenin
• Henri Le Chatelier
• Frank Lilian Gilbreth
• Peter Drucker
• Henry Gantt
• Henry Ford
• Hugo Munsterbuerg
• Champy/Hammer

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Frederick Taylor - Criticisms

• Relied on money to motivate
• Efficiency before ethics
• Views in accord with socialism
• Increased wages until competitions catches up
• Built on a lack of trust, a lack of respect for
  the worth, wit and intelligence of individuals

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Frederick Taylor - Criticisms

• Eliminated qualified, professional work
• Focus on making the task more stupid
• Believed people did not need to be told what was
  happening elsewhere in the organization
• Employees had to turn off their minds
• Denied people their individuality

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Frederick Taylor - Criticisms

• 1909 - U.S. Steel, 3500 workers revolt
• 1911 - Taylor questioned at a special committee
  of the U.S. House of Representatives
• Nightmare visions explored in literature

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Where Do We Go From Here?

• Peter Drucker
• Knowledge workers are abysmally unproductive
• Challenge of the next century is to increase the
  productivity of knowledge workers
• Lucier and Torsilieri
• Routine work (80) needs to be standardized.
• Complex decisions should be outsourced