Frederick Winslow Taylor

Frederick Winslow Taylor

Mary Ellen Papesh

Frederick Winslow Taylor, the father of scientific management, was bornon March 20, 1865, into an upper class liberal Philadelphia family. Hisfather, a Princeton graduate and lawyer, made enough money from mortgagesand did not have to keep a regular job. His mother was a spirited abolitionistand feminist who was said to have run an underground railroad station forrunaway slaves. Both parents were Quakers and believed in high thinkingand plain living. Parental authority was not questioned and children wereseen and not heard in the Taylor family. Family members referred to eachother as "thee" and "thou". At an early age Taylorlearned self-control and his Quaker upbringing helped him to avoid conflictswith his peers and to resolve disagreements among them.

Taylor was a compulsive adolescent and was always counting and measuringthings to figure a better way of doing something. At age twelve, he inventeda harness for himself to keep from sleeping on his back, hoping to avoidthe nightmares he was having.

At age twenty-five, Taylor earned an engineering degree at the StevensInstitute of Technology in New Jersey while holding a full time job. Todate, no one has broken that record.

Another of his achievements was his winning of the U.S. Lawn TennisAssociation doubles championship where he used a patented spoon-shapedracket that he himself designed.

Even though he excelled in math and sports and had a degree from anexclusive college, Frederick chose to work as a machinist and pattern makerin Philadelphia at the Enterprise Hydraulic Works (Weisford 1987).

After his apprenticeship at the hydraulic works plant, he became a commonlaborer at the Midvale Steel Company. He started as shop clerk and quicklyprogressed to machinist, foreman, maintenance foreman, and chief draftsman.Within six years he advanced to research director, then chief engineer.While working there he introduced piece work in the factory. His goal wasto find the most efficient way to perform specific tasks. He closely watchedhow work was done and would then measure the quantity produced (Kanigel44).

Taylor‘s work was taking place in a time period when there was muchindustrial change happening after the Civil War. National industries grewout of local trades -- steel, glass, textiles, and shoes and what weresmall factories became large plants. Owners of capital became wealthierwith mass production, and workers received little for their efforts. Problemsincluded carelessness, safety, inefficiencies, and soldiering (worker footdragging) on the job. Taylor sought to get past the futile incentive bonusesthat management thought would remedy the problems. He believed that incentivewages were no solution unless they were combined with efficient tasks thatwere carefully planned and easily learned. He proposed that managementshould work cooperatively in a supportive role (Freedman 26-38). "Notonly did Taylor have some definite ideas about work and how it should bestudied, organized, and rewarded, but it appears he also knew somethingabout organizational change" (Wredge and Greenwood 270-272).

Taylor believed that the secret of productivity was finding the rightchallenge for each person, then paying him well for increased output. AtMidvale, he used time studies to set daily production quotas. Incentiveswould be paid to those reaching their daily goal. Those who didn‘t reachtheir goal would get the differential rate, a much lower pay. Taylor doubledproductivity using time study, systematic controls and tools, functionalforemanship, and his new wage scheme. He paid the person not the job.

At age thirty-seven, Frederick became a consulting engineer. Unfortunately,he did not understand the resistance of the people most threatened by hissystem -- supervisors and middle managers. He focused on cost cutting methodswhen a problem called for new customers and products. At the Simonds RollerBearing Company he increased productivity while improving speed and accuracy.Taylor‘s critics said he was too harsh because his innovative plan causedpeople to lose their jobs, referring to his replacing of 120 workers withonly 35 at Simonds.

In practice, Taylor "took a harsh, often ruthless approach"to chopping heads rather than saving jobs. He believed that unions wouldn‘tbe necessary if workers were paid their individual worth (Weisbord 1987).

As a consultant, Frederick‘s most important client was Bethlehem IronCompany, later known as Bethlehem Steel Company. In 1901, he and anotherStevens graduate made Bethlehem "the world‘s most modern factory andpotentially a prototype for manufacturers and engineers in other industries"by installing production planning, differential piece rates, and functionalforemanship (Nelson 1980). Among Taylor‘s other contributions to Bethlehemin 1901 were a real time analysis of daily output and costs, a modern costaccounting system, reduced yard worker‘s ranks from 500 to 140, doubledstamping mill production, and lowered cost per ton of materials handledfrom eight cents to four cents. He successfully implemented cost savingtechniques even though he added clerks, teachers, time-study engineers,supervision and staffing support positions. While at Bethlehem, Taylorand Manusel White codeveloped the Taylor-White system for heat treatingchrome-tungsten tool steel, which won Frederick international recognition.

Despite his many impressive achievements, Taylor made enemies. Somemanagers were also landlords and when Taylor reduced the yard force population,they thought he would depopulate South Bethlehem (Weisbord 1987). Ironically,that is exactly what they had hired Taylor to do, but they never expectedthat he would actually do it. In fact, displaced workers were moved toother jobs and did not lose employment. After disputes with new managementat Bethlehem, Taylor was eventually fired in May of 1901.

Taylor did not suffer financially from losing his job, but the eventdid hurt his self-esteem. He began to concentrate on his home and hobbiesand with his wife , Louise Spooner, adopted three orphaned children. AfterBethlehem, Frederick never worked for money again.

Much of his famous book, "The Principles of Scientific Management",was written from transcripts of talks Taylor gave at his estate years afterhe stopped working for money. The system he describes in his book is anactual composite of everything he had learned from trying different thingsat many companies. Taylor did what he could to fit as much of his thinkingto his client‘s problems and motives for each particular situation. Consultantsuse this type of process today." He was the first person in historyto make a systematic attempt to improve both output and work life in factories"(Weisford 1987).

In his last years Frederick felt misunderstood by quick-fix managersand zealous unionists, and wronged by consultant imitators. His energywas sapped by the constant attention he paid to his wife‘s severe illnesses.

While on a speaking tour in the Midwest, in 1915, he contracted influenza.He was admitted to a hospital in Philadelphia and celebrated his fifty-ninthbirthday there. He died the next day.

Taylor‘s core values: the rule of reason, improved quality, lower costs,higher wages, higher output, labor-management cooperation, experimentation,clear tasks and goals, feedback, training, mutual help and support, stressreduction, and the careful selection and development of people. He wasthe first to present a systematic study of interactions among job requirements,tools, methods, and human skill, to fit people to jobs both psychologicallyand physically, and to let data and facts do the talking rather than prejudice,opinions, or egomania (Weisford 1987).

References

Freedman, David H. "Is Management Still a Science?" HarvardBusiness Review November-December 1992: 26-38.

Kanigel, Robert. "Frederick Taylor‘s Apprencticeship." TheWilson Quarterly Summer 1996: 44

Nelson, D. Frederick Taylor and the Rise of Scientific Management. Madison:University of Wisconsin Press, 1980.

Weisbord, Marvin R. Productive Workplaces. San Francisco: Jossey-BassInc., Publishers, 1987.

Wrege, Charles D. and Greenwood, Ronald G. "Organization Theoryand Frederick Taylor." Public Administration Review May/June 1993:270-272.

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