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:
 1894. Notes on Belting
 1895. A Piece-rate System
 1896. The adjustment of wages to efficiency; three papers .... New York, For the American
economic association by the Macmillan company; London, S. Sonnenschein & co..
 1903. Shop management; a paper read before the American society of mechanical engineers.
New York.
 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.
 1911. Principles of Scientific Management. New York and London, Harper & brothers.
 1911. Shop management, by Frederick Winslow Taylor ... with an introduction by Henry R.
Towne .... New York, London, Harper & Brothers.
 1911. A treatise on concrete, plain and reinforced: materials, construction, and design of
concrete and reinforced concrete. (2d ed). New York, J. Wiley & sons.
 1912. Concrete costs. New York, J. Wiley & sons.