Frederick Winslow Taylor

Frederick Taylor Frederick Winslow Taylor (20 March 1856 – 21 March 1915), widely known as F. W. Taylor, was an American mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. He is regarded as the father of scientific management, and was one of the first management consultants.

Frederick Taylor

Taylor was one of the intellectual leaders of the Efficiency movement and his ideas, broadly conceived, were highly influential in the Progressive Era.

Frederick Taylor and Scientific Management In 1911, Frederick Winslow Taylor published his work, The Principles of Scientific Management. Scientific management methods called for optimizing the way that tasks were performed and simplifying the jobs enough so that workers could be trained to perform their specialized sequence of motions in the one "best" way. Taylor became interested in improving worker productivity early in his career when he observed gross inefficiencies during his contact with steel workers.

Taylor's 4 Principles of Scientific Management 2. Replace rule-of-thumb work methods with methods based on a scientific

study of the tasks. 3. Scientifically select, train, and develop each worker rather than passively leaving them to train themselves. 4. Cooperate with the workers to ensure that the scientifically developed methods are being followed. 5. 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.

Drawbacks of Scientific Management While scientific management principles improved productivity and had a substantial impact on industry, they also increased the monotony of work. The core job dimensions of skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback all were missing from the picture of scientific management. While in many cases the new ways of working were accepted by the workers, in some cases they were not. The use of stopwatches often was a protested issue and led to a strike at one factory where "Taylorism" was being tested. Complaints that Taylorism was dehumanizing led to an investigation by the United States Congress. Despite its controversy, scientific management changed the way that work was done, and forms of it continue to be used today.

Publications 

Taylor published many articles and short monographs. A selection:

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1894. Notes on Belting

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1895. A Piece-rate System

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1896. The adjustment of wages to efficiency; three papers .... New York, For the American economic association by the Macmillan company; London, S. Sonnenschein & co..

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1903. Shop management; a paper read before the American society of mechanical engineers. New York.

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1906. On the art of cutting metals, by Mr. F. W. Taylor; an address made at the opening of the annual meeting in New York, December 1906. New York, The American society of mechanical engineers.

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1911. Principles of Scientific Management. New York and London, Harper & brothers.

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1911. Shop management, by Frederick Winslow Taylor ... with an introduction by Henry R. Towne .... New York, London, Harper & Brothers.

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1911. A treatise on concrete, plain and reinforced: materials, construction, and design of concrete and reinforced concrete. (2d ed). New York, J. Wiley & sons.

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1912. Concrete costs. New York, J. Wiley & sons.