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Frederick Taylor and Scientific Management

 In 1911, Frederick Winslow Taylor published his work, The Principles of Scientific
Management.

 Is known as a father of scientific management.

 He described how the application of the scientific method to the management of workers
greatly could improve productivity.

 Scientific management methods called for optimizing(produce max result) 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.

 Prior to scientific management, work was performed by skilled craftsmen(skilled worker)

who had learned their jobs in lengthy apprenticeships.

 They made their own decisions about how their job was to be performed.

 Scientific management took away much of this autonomy and converted skilled crafts into a
series of simplified jobs that could be performed by unskilled workers who easily could be
trained for the tasks.

 Taylor became interested in improving worker productivity early in his career when he
observed gross inefficiencies during his contact with steel workers.

Soldiering

Working in the steel industry, Taylor had observed the phenomenon of workers' purposely
operating well below their capacity, which is, soldiering. He attributed soldiering to three causes:

1. The almost universally held belief among workers that if they became more productive,
fewer of them would be needed and jobs would be eliminated.
2. Non-incentive wage systems encourage low productivity.
3. If the employee will receive the same pay regardless of how much is produced, assuming
the employee can convince the employer that the slow pace really is a good pace for the
job.
4. Employees don’t want to work for faster pace because they fear that this faster pace
would become the new standard.
5. If employees are paid by the quantity they produce, they fear that management will
decrease their per-unit pay if the quantity increases.
6. Workers waste much of their effort by relying on rule-of-thumb methods rather than on
optimal work methods that can be determined by scientific study of the task.
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To counter soldiering and to improve efficiency, Taylor began to conduct experiments to

determine the best level of performance for certain jobs, and what was necessary to achieve this
performance.

Time Studies

Determination of a standard period of time for performing a task

 Taylor argued that even the most basic, mindless tasks could be planned in a way that
dramatically would increase productivity, and
 That scientific management of the work was more effective than the "initiative and
incentive" method of motivating workers.
 The initiative and incentive method offered an incentive to increase productivity but
placed the responsibility on the worker to figure out how to do it.
 To scientifically determine the optimal way to perform a job, Taylor performed
experiments that he called time studies, (also known as time and motion studies). These
studies were characterized by the use of a stopwatch to time a worker's sequence of
motions, with the goal of determining the one best way to perform a job.
 The following are examples of some of the time-and-motion studies that were
performed by Taylor and others in the era of scientific management.

Pig Iron
If workers were moving 12 1/2 tons of pig iron per day and they could be incentivized to try to
move 47 1/2 tons per day, left to their own wits they probably would become exhausted after a
few hours and fail to reach their goal. However, by first conducting experiments to determine the
amount of resting that was necessary, the worker's manager could determine the optimal timing
of lifting and resting so that the worker could move the 47 1/2 tons per day without tiring.

well known example of the scientific management theory is the pig iron experiment. Iron was
loaded onto rail cars by workers each lot weighing 92 pounds and known as a “pig”. On average
12.5 tons were loaded onto the rail cars but Taylor believed that scientific management could be
used to increase this to 47/48 tons per day. Through experimenting with various procedures and
tools Taylor achieved this. This is how he did it:

 Taylor ensured that he matched each of the jobs to each of the workers skills and
abilities.
 Taylor ensured that he provided the workers with the correct tools.
 Taylor ensured that he provided workers with clear instructions about how to do each job.
Taylor ensured that the workers understood the instructions and then Taylor ensured that
the workers followed the instructions exactly as he had explained.
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 Taylor then created worker motivation by providing a significantly higher daily wage.

It is believed that through the use of scientific management Taylor increased productivity on the
shop floor by 200 percent. Taylor’s ideas and thoughts were adopted throughout the world
including in France, Russia and Japan. In today’s world scientific management has been merged
with other ideas and is used by managers in the form of time and motion studies to eradicate
wasted motions, incentive schemes based on performance and hiring the best qualified workers
for each job.

Not all workers were physically capable of moving 47 1/2 tons per day; perhaps only 1/8 of the
pig iron handlers were capable of doing so. While these 1/8 were not extraordinary people who
were highly prized by society, their physical capabilities were well-suited to moving pig iron.
This example suggests that workers should be selected according to how well they are suited for
a particular job.

The Science of Shoveling

In another study of the "science of shoveling", Taylor ran time studies to determine that the
optimal weight that a worker should lift in a shovel was 21 pounds. Since there is a wide range of
densities of materials, the shovel should be sized so that it would hold 21 pounds of the
substance being shoveled. The firm provided the workers with optimal shovels. The result was a
three to four fold increase in productivity and workers were rewarded with pay increases. Prior to
scientific management, workers used their own shovels and rarely had the optimal one for the
job.

Bricklaying
Others performed experiments that focused on specific motions, such as Gilbreth's bricklaying
experiments that resulted in a dramatic decrease in the number of motions required to lay bricks.
The husband and wife Gilbreth team used motion picture technology to study the motions of the
workers in some of their experiments.

Taylor's 4 Principles of Scientific Management

After years of various experiments to determine optimal work methods, Taylor proposed the
following four principles of scientific management:

1. Replace rule-of-thumb work methods with methods based on a scientific study of the
tasks.
2. Scientifically select, train, and develop each worker rather than passively leaving them to
train themselves.
3. Cooperate with the workers to ensure that the scientifically developed methods are being
followed.
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4. 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.

These principles were implemented in many factories, often increasing productivity by a factor
of three or more. Henry Ford applied Taylor's principles in his automobile factories, and families
even began to perform their household tasks based on the results of time and motion studies.

Drawbacks of Scientific Management

1. While scientific management principles improved productivity and had a substantial

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