Frederick Winslow Taylor, the father of scientific management
Frederick Winslow Taylor, born in March 20, 1856, and the date of his death was March 21, 1915. Coincidentally, Taylor passed away on the day after his 59th birthday. His tombstone is located on a hill overlooking the chimneys of the Philadelphia Steel Plant. The tombstone is engraved with: "Father of Scientific Management-Frederick Winslow Taylor."
Taylor left this world with a depressed mood. The scientific management principles and methods that he studied diligently during his lifetime were difficult to implement due to misinterpretation. The endless cross-examination by congressmen and investigators at the congressional hearings, especially the several strikes against the implementation of the Taylor System, broke the heart of this thinker who deeply sympathized with the workers and worked hard. . In order to eliminate people's doubts, this man who was not good at words had to travel long distances to explain and defend his theories and methods. It was on his way back from giving a speech that he contracted pneumonia in a ventilated sleeper car and soon lost his life at the age of 59.
Taylor's era, especially the last few decades of the 19th century, saw unprecedented capital accumulation and industrial technological progress in American industry. However, the poor way of developing, organizing, controlling and managing these industrial resources seriously hinders the improvement of production efficiency. Another issue is how to enable workers to realize their potential. At that time, the relationship between workers and capitalists was seriously intensified: the capitalists were arrogant towards the workers, and the workers lived a hard life, while the capitalists personally lived a luxurious life; the workers continued to fight for their own rights by destroying machines and joining general strikes led by trade union organizations. right. The antagonism between labor and capital has seriously affected the labor productivity of enterprises. As for how to solve the problem of unleashing the potential of labor, some people advocate using superior machines to replace labor, some advocate piloting profit-sharing plans, and still others advocate improving production procedures, methods and systems. Taylor was a young manager and engineer at the time and a member of the American Society of Engineers, so he was well aware of some of the above-mentioned solutions proposed by people, and based on this, he proposed his epoch-making scientific management theories and methods.
Taylor was born in a wealthy lawyer family in Philadelphia, USA. After graduating from high school, he was admitted to Harvard University's law department, but had to drop out due to eye disease. In 1875, he entered a small machine shop as an apprentice. In 1878, he transferred to the Midvale Steel Works in Philadelphia as a machinist, where he worked until 1897. During this period, due to his hard work and outstanding performance, he was quickly promoted to workshop manager, team leader, foreman, technician, drafting director and chief engineer. He also obtained a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering on the basis of part-time study. Taylor's experiences gave him ample opportunities to directly understand the various problems and attitudes of workers, and he saw great possibilities for improving management levels.
Taylor has focused most of his life on how to improve production efficiency. This will not only reduce costs and increase profits, but also increase workers' wages by improving labor productivity. Taylor was deeply touched by the problem of workers being "worked out" at work. He believes that the main reason for "slowing down foreign workers" is that workers are worried that if they work too much, they may lose their jobs, so they would rather produce less than work more. Taylor believes that productivity is an issue ignored by both labor and management, in part because neither managers nor workers understand what a "reasonable day's work" and "a reasonable day's pay" are. Furthermore, Taylor believed that both managers and workers were overly concerned with the distribution of wages and profits and had little understanding of how to increase productivity so that both labor and management could receive more compensation. In summary, Taylor viewed productivity as a guarantee of higher wages and higher profits. He believed that by applying scientific methods to replace routine and experience, higher productivity could be achieved without spending more energy and effort on the part of people.
From 1898 to 1901, Taylor was employed by the Bethlehem Steel Company and patented a high-speed tool steel. After 1901, he devoted most of his time to consulting, writing, and speaking to promote his set of management theories - "scientific management." Beginning in 1881, he conducted a "metal cutting experiment" to study the reasonable workload of each metal cutting worker in a working day. After two years of preliminary trials, a set of workload standards was developed for workers. Midvale's experiments were the beginning of work-hour research. In 1898, while employed by Bethlehem Steel Company, Taylor conducted the famous "Pig Iron Moving Experiment" and "Shovel Experiment." The test of handling pig iron blocks was conducted among about 75 workers in the product handling team of the company's five blast furnaces. This research improved operating methods and trained workers, resulting in a three-fold increase in the handling capacity of pig iron blocks. The shovel test is a systematic study of the shape and specifications of the shovel that can meet the standard load of various materials after loading on the shovel, as well as the best way to load the shovel with various materials. In addition, Taylor also studied the precise timing of each set of movements to derive the amount of work a "first-class worker" should complete every day. The results of this study are very outstanding. The labor force in the stockyard has been reduced from 400-600 to 140 people, the average daily operation volume per person has increased from 16 tons to 59 tons, and the daily wage of each worker has increased from 1.15 US dollars. to $1.88. The metal cutting test lasted for 26 years, and more than 30,000 tests were conducted. 800,000 pounds of steel were cut into chips by the test tools, at a total cost of approximately US$150,000. The test results discovered high-speed tool steel that can greatly improve the output of metal cutting machinists, and obtained information on appropriate rotation speeds, feed amounts, and cutting dosage standards for various machine tools.
Taylor devoted his life to scientific management. His works include "Piece Rate System" (1895), "Workshop Management" (1903), "Principles of Scientific Management" (including a speech in Congress) Testimony, 1912). However, Taylor's approach and proposition were not accepted by people at the beginning. On the contrary, they were protested by people, including labor unions. For example, a young socialist named Sinclair wrote to the editor of "American Magazine", accusing Taylor of "raising wages by 61 while workload increased by 362." Taylor also encountered opposition from the administration and the citizens of Bethlehem. The U.S. Congress held hearings on the Taylor System and other factory management systems in 1912. There, Taylor had to defend his views against mostly hostile members of Congress. Taylor's wonderful testimony before the committee of the House of Representatives promoted the principles of scientific management and its specific methods and techniques to the public. It became his best explanation of the principles of scientific management and caused a great sensation.
Taylor's basic principles of scientific management can be summarized in the following five aspects: (1) Substituting science (systematic knowledge) for empirical methods; (2) Achieving coordination in collective activities to replace inconsistency; (3) to achieve mutual cooperation among people to replace chaotic individualism; (4) to work for the maximum output, rather than to limit the output; (5) to train workers to the greatest extent possible so that Maximum achievement for both themselves and the company. Please note that these basic management principles of Taylor are very close to the basic concepts of modern managers. Certainly some of the methods developed by Taylor, his colleagues and their followers to put their ideas and principles into practice now seem somewhat mechanical. For example, the widely used applied time study and motion study to determine the best method and workload for a specific job, and the development of various wage plans based on output in order to improve productivity. Although necessary to implement Taylor's ideas, these The method is also often used by many factory owners to increase productivity without giving workers adequate compensation, proper training, or management help. And the latter was certainly not Taylor's original intention.
Throughout Taylor's writings, although it seems overly focused on workshop-level productivity, in fact the main theme running through Taylor's writings is a strong humanistic and modern perspective. Taylor believed that people should be carefully selected, hired and trained so that they can do the most suitable and efficient work; he believed that there was no irreconcilable interest relationship between workers, managers and factory owners; he emphasized that managers The importance of making careful plans in advance and the responsibility of managers to help workers improve efficiency by formulating scientific work systems; Taylor believes that the relationship between employers and employees is undoubtedly the most important part of the art of management, etc. These views now seem far from outdated.