📖 The Principles of Scientific Management

1911. Frederick W. Taylor

In Robert Kanigel’s biography of Taylor, he described him as “the first efficiency expert, the original time-and-motion man”. In a society of small craft producers, Taylor’s management revolution paved the way for the era of mass production.

In another post I have tried to comment on the role this book has played in society, and how deeply rooted it’s philosophies have become. As a result i’ll keep this report a little shorter and just highlight some key extracts.

System based

At the time, “the workmen in each of these trades have had their knowledge handed down to them by word of mouth”. And as a result “in hardly any element of any trade is there uniformity in the methods which are used”. In response to this, Taylor’s approach was “the establishment of many rules, laws, and formulae which replace the judgment of the individual workman”.

“In the past the man has been first; in the future the system must be first.”

Soldiering

Taylor laid out an early warning on the dangers of soldiering.

“In a majority of the cases this man deliberately plans to do as little as he safely can to turn out far less work than he is well able to do.”

Rather than show up ready to work, Taylor felt “the great majority of our men are deliberately doing just the opposite” which he attributed to “the natural instinct and tendency of men to take it easy”. “The natural laziness of men is serious” he warned, and soldiering “constitutes the greatest evil with which the working people are now afflicted.”

Motion study

Taylor’s task management focused on “eliminating unnecessary motions and substituting fast for slow and inefficient motions”. While formulating the science of a task by observing a worker, he would “stand over him and direct his work, day after day”, noting “with a stopwatch the proper time for all of the motions that were made by the men”, generating “thousands of stopwatch observations”. For example, he taught “bricklayers to make simple motions with both hands at the same time, where before they completed a motion with the right hand and followed it later with one from the left hand”.

One Best Way

Kanigel’s above mentioned autobiography on Taylor is titled The One Best Way, as Taylor gave rise to the notion of best practices in management through his belief that “there is always one method and one implement which is quicker and better than any of the rest”.

Task Management

“The work of every workman is fully planned out by the management at least one day in advance, and each man receives in most cases complete written instructions, describing in detail the task which he is to accomplish, as well as the means to be used in doing the work.”

The workers didn’t love him

Once or twice I was begged by some of my friends among the workmen not to walk home, about two and a half miles along the lonely path by the side of the railway. I was told that if I continued to do this it would be at the risk of my life.

But worry not reader, as he sent these men a defiant message that “I propose to walk home every night right up that railway track; that I never had carried and never would carry any weapon of any kind , and that they could shoot and be done.” Later in the book he humbly recognises “the writer had not been especially noted for his tact”.

Wooden man

The first impression is that this all tends to make him a mere automaton, a wooden man. As the workmen frequently say when they first come under this system, “ Why I am not allowed to think or move without some one interfering or doing it for me!”

However he goes on to argue that this approach “in no way narrows him. On the contrary he is quickly given the very best knowledge of his predecessors” and that he should be glad of the efficiency gains—and increased wages—he has now earned as a result of these best practices being handed to him.

Summary

To finish, I will include the summarised steps as Taylor wrote them for the basic approach to applying his system in an organisation.

1st. Find, ten or fifteen different men who are especially skilful in doing the particular work to be analyzed.

2nd. Study the exact series of elementary operations or motions which each of these men uses in doing the work which is being investigated, as well as the implements each man uses.

3rd. Study with a stop-watch the time required to make each of these elementary movements and then select the quickest way of doing each element of the work.

4th. Eliminate all false movements, slow movements, and useless movements.

5th. After doing away with all unnecessary movements, collect into one series the quickest and best movements as well as the best implements. This one new method, involving that series of motions which can be made quickest and best, is then substituted in place of the ten or fifteen inferior series which were formerly in use.

This best method becomes standard, and remains standard, to be taught first to the teachers (or functional foremen) and by them to every workman in the establishment until it is superseded by a quicker and better series of movements. In this simple way one element after another of the science is developed.

That cover photo above isn’t actually mine, but pinched from Aaron Dignan. I downloaded the book for free on kindle.