(Through his business in changing the methods of shop mana...)
Through his business in changing the methods of shop management, the writer has been brought into intimate contact over a period of years with the organization of manufacturing and industrial establishments, covering a large variety and range of product, and employing workmen in many of the leading trades. In taking a broad view of the field of management, the two facts which appear most noteworthy are: (a) What may be called the great unevenness, or lack of uniformity shown, even in our best run works, in the development of the several elements, which together constitute what is called the management. (b) The lack of apparent relation between good shop management and the payment of dividends.
Frederick Winslow Taylor: A Memorial Volume (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Frederick Winslow Taylor: A Memorial Volume
...)
Excerpt from Frederick Winslow Taylor: A Memorial Volume
Many others have prayed for an industrial social millennium, expecting it to come from spiritual grace through lapse Of time, but Dr. Taylor not only saw the possibilities Of the future, but he did more: he told in detail exactly how this long-hoped - for condition might be actually accomplished at once. The seed he has sown is springing up in thousands Of places; the message he gave us is making hun dreds, yes, even thousands Of converts; the work he SO ably started, being based upon eternal truth, will partake Of the lasting characteristics Of its foundation.
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(2014 Reprint of 1911 Edition. Full facsimile of the origi...)
2014 Reprint of 1911 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition. This influential monograph, which laid out the principles of scientific management, is a seminal text of modern organization and decision theory and has motivated administrators and students of managerial technique. Taylor was an American manufacturing manager, mechanical engineer, and then a management consultant in his later years. He is often called "The Father of Scientific Management." His approach is also often referred to, as Taylor's Principles, or Taylorism.
(Frederick Winslow Taylor was a nineteenth century America...)
Frederick Winslow Taylor was a nineteenth century American mechanical engineer concerned with management consultancy, scientific management, and industrial efficiency. His work, The Principles of Scientific Management, outlines the foundation for modern organization and decision theory. He does this through describing the dilemma: workers harbor fears that higher individual productivity will eventually lead to fewer jobs. Taylor's suggestion is to deride this fear by providing incentives for workers and re-framing the consumer, shareholder, and worker relationship. A great and informative read for anyone interested in efficient management practices.
Frederick Winslow Taylor was an American mechanical engineer and inventor.
Background
Taylor was born in 1856 in Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was the youngest child of Franklin and Emily Annette (Winslow) Taylor. He was a descendant of Samuel Taylor, who settled in Burlington, N. J. , in 1677. His father was a lawyer, more interested, however, in literature than law; his mother was an ardent abolitionist and a coworker with Lucretia Mott in this cause.
Education
Taylor received his early education from his mother. In 1872, after two years of schooling in France and Germany, followed by eighteen months of travel in Europe, he entered Phillips Exeter Academy at Exeter, N. H. , to prepare for the Harvard Law School. Though he graduated with his class two years later, his eyesight had become in the meantime so impaired that he had to abandon further study.
In 1883, by studying at night, obtained the degree of M. E. from Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, N. J.
Career
Between 1874 and 1878 he worked in the shops of the Enterprise Hydraulic Works, a pump-manufacturing company in Philadelphia, learning the trades of pattern-maker and machinist. In the latter year he joined the Midvale Steel Company, Philadelphia, as a common laborer. In the succeeding twelve years he rose to be chief engineer (1884). His inventions during these years effecting improvements in machinery and manufacturing methods were many, the outstanding one being the design and construction of the largest successful steam hammer ever built in the United States (patent No. 424, 939, April 1, 1890).
After three years (1890 - 93) as general manager of the Manufacturing Investment Company, Philadelphia, operators of large paper mills in Maine and Wisconsin, he began a consulting practice in Philadelphia – his business card read "Systematizing Shop Management and Manufacturing Costs a Specialty" – which led to the development of a new profession. Behind this lay Taylor's years of observation and study of manufacturing conditions and methods. From these he had evolved a theory that, by scientific study of every minute step and operation in a manufacturing plant, data could be obtained as to the fair and reasonable production capacities of both man and machine, and that the application of such data would, in turn, abolish the antagonism between employer and employee, and bring about increased efficiencies in all directions. He had in addition worked out a comprehensive system of analysis, classification, and symbolization to be used in the study of every type of manufacturing organization.
For five years he successfully applied his theory in a variety of establishments, administrative and sales departments as well as shops. In 1898 he was retained exclusively for that purpose by the Bethlehem Steel Company, Bethlehem, Pa. In the course of his work there he undertook, with J. Maunsel White, a study of the treatment of tool steel which led to the discovery of the Taylor-White process of heat treatment of tool steel, yielding increased cutting capacities of 200 to 300 per cent. This process and the tools treated by it are now used in practically every machine shop of the world. While he was at Bethlehem, too, Taylor's ideas regarding scientific management took more concrete form. Being convinced of the results that would be attained if these principles should be generally adopted throughout the industrial world, he resigned from the Bethlehem Steel Company in 1901, returned to Philadelphia, and devoted the remainder of his life to expounding these principles, giving his services free to anybody who was sincerely desirous of carrying out his methods. While he met with many unbelievers among both employers and employees, he lived to see his system widely applied.
He delivered his exhaustive monograph "On the Art of Cutting Metals" in 1906. In 1911 he published The Principles of Scientific Management, and submitted to Congress a report entitled " 'Taylor System' of Shop Management". In addition to these publications he was joint author with Sanford E. Thompson of two works on concrete, A Treatise on Concrete, Plain and Reinforced (1905) and Concrete Costs (1912).
He died in Philadelphia of pneumonia, survived by his widow.
(2014 Reprint of 1911 Edition. Full facsimile of the origi...)
Views
Quotations:
"In the past the man has been first; in the future the system must be first. This in no sense, however, implies that great men are not needed. On the contrary, the first object of any good system must be that of developing first-class men; and under systematic management the best man rises to the top more certainly and more rapidly than ever before. "
"In the past the man has been first; in the future the system must be first. "
"It's easier to make a reporter into an economist than an economist into a reporter. "
"I am a complete, mature, self-sufficient being. "
"In the early stages of wealth, up to 10 years after individuals became very rich, they display a bit of reluctance to spend money. It's a lot easier rationalizing spending a lot for a house. "
Membership
An active member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, he served as vice-president in 1904-05 and as president in 1906.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
"There is another and higher leadership, that of the intellect, by which the methods and thoughts of one man may affect the whole civilized world. Industrial leaders who have most prominently attracted our attention in the past are those who have, by their inventions or their direction of activities, accumulated large fortunes ; but none of these are as great as the man who by the force of his intellect leads people throughout the civilized world to benefit themselves and others. Such a man was the late Frederick Winslow Taylor who, in his determination to eliminate error and to base our industrial relations on fact, set an example which will have an effect all over the world. "
Henry L. Gantt (1916), Industrial leadership, New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 27.
"Frederick W. Taylor was the first man in recorded history who deemed work deserving of systematic observation and study. On Taylor's '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. "
Peter Drucker (1974) Management: tasks, responsibilities, practices. p. 181.
Interests
He was much interested in amateur sports, particularly tennis.
Sport & Clubs
Tennis, golf
Connections
On May 3, 1884, he married Louise M. Spooner of Philadelphia.