Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Frederick Winslow TAYLOR
The "Father of Scientific Management," Frederick Winslow Taylor was almost certainly a man who suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder. As a child, he recorded his daily activities, counted his footsteps, and made the notation "make lists" in his journal. He counted and measured things in order to try to figure out a better way of doing something. At the age of 12, he invented a harness to prevent himself from sleeping on his back (in order to prevent nightmares).
Born in Germantown in 1856, Taylor was the son of wealthy, devout Quakers. His father was a lawyer, and his mother was an abolitionist and feminist who was said to have run a station on the Underground Railroad system. Taylor was accepted into Harvard, but could not attend due to eye problems. Instead, he went to work in a Philadelphia machine shop. After earning an engineering degree at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, Taylor began work at the Midvale Steel Company. He rose from shop clerk to machinist, foreman, maintenance foreman, chief draftsman, research director, and then chief engineer. During this time, he began his experiments in worker productivity.
Taylor performed thousands of experiments. He measured workers by time and productivity, in an effort to find the most efficient way to perform tasks. He sought a more scientific approach to labor. His revolutionary system cut production costs and increased plant output and efficiency. Up until the introduction of Taylor's practices, each worker owned his own tools and worked his machine on his own; there was no inventory control, and no standardized way of performing tasks. Workers were skilled craftsmen who had learned their trade through apprenticeships. The Taylor system eliminated this individuality, instead relying on a "scientific" approach to completing tasks. This led to a more modern system of management, one in which workers were given tools and specific instructions and training on how to perform their jobs. Consequently, unskilled laborers could be trained to perform many of the jobs craftsmen had formerly held.
Taylor presented his ideas in a series of papers and speeches, before publishing his seminal work, The Principles of Scientific Management, in 1911. While Taylorism was accepted enthusiastically by many, it did cause controversy. There were complaints that his recommendations were dehumanizing, and the use of the stopwatch to time employees was a source of discontent at many factories. At one plant, Taylor replaced 120 workers with only 35, bringing harsh criticism.
After his employment at Midvale, in 1890, Taylor became a management consultant, serving many prominent firms, including the Bethlehem Steel Company. During his time at Bethlehem, Taylor, along with Manusel White, developed the Taylor-White system for heat treating chrome-tungsten tool steel. This won him international recognition, including a gold medal from the Paris Exposition in 1900. After losing his job at Bethlehem Steel in 1901, Taylor concentrated on his home life, and worked on his famous book. In 1915, he contracted influenza and died.
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