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Taylor FW

Name: Frederick Winslow Taylor

Achievements: Industrial management

Born: March 20, 1856; Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Died: March 21, 1915; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Aged 59

Field & Discipline: Engineering; Engineer

Language: English

Father: Franklin Taylor

Mother: Emily Winslow (m. 1851)

Siblings: Edward Winslow (b. 1854); Mary Newbold (b. 1858)

Spouse: Louise Spooner (m. 1884)

Children: Elizabeth (adopted 1901); Kempton (adopted 1901); Robert Aiken (adopted 1901)

Education: Private tutors; Phillips Exeter Academy (1872-74)

Major Work:

“The Principles of Scientific Management” (1911)

Life & Times: 

Although he passed the Harvard examination with honors, severe eye strain from night study forced him to abandon plans for matriculation and he returned home to Philadelphia in 1875.

Here, his eyesight improved with corrective glasses, he began industrial  apprenticeship at the Enterprise Hydraulic Works, where he learned the trades of patternmaker and machinist as a prelude to a business career.

In 1878, Taylor joined the Midvale Steel Company; starting as a machine shop labourer, he became successively a shop clerk, machinist, gang boss, foreman, master mechanic, head of the drawing office, and chief engineer, but during his early years he was appalled by the chaotic nature of much of the work, and the worker-led level of production.

Meanwhile, in late 1879 he had resumed his education, as a part-time student at the

Stevens Institute of Technology, from where he received a degree in mechanical engineering in 1883.

As gang boss and later foreman at Midvale by 1883 he was examining every aspect of the work on the shop floor, and experimenting with rate setting, the standardization of tasks, and what he would later call "time studies" (the division of each task into discrete pieces, which were then timed with stop watches), all with the aim of examining and reorganizing the operations of machines and workers in order to improve methods, standardize practices, and increase production efficiency.

In 1884 Taylor was made chief engineer at Midvale, and during this year he completed the design and construction of a new machine shop, in which every task was examined and improved, often by introducing special new tools (many of Taylor's own design), and by automating tasks as much as possible, and in which every worker was subject to the rigours of Taylor's time system.

He also successfully persuaded the management of Midvale to increase the wages of those workers who stuck to the new, regimented timekeeping (which was generally highly unpopular), and introduced a number of significant large-scale inventions on the shop floor - including his great steam hammer and an entirely new automated grinding machine.

Taylor's work at Midvale during the 1880s were highly successful in terms of increased and more efficient production, and marked the beginning of what would form the basis of Taylor's subsequent theories of management science. Meanwhile, he was also pursuing an increasingly successful career as an active professional engineer, establishing wide contacts in the emerging American technical societies.

One of these was the American Society of Mechanical Engineers the meetings of which, by the 1880s, had become forums for the discussion of new systematic approaches to industrial management, and at which Taylor found willing listeners for his ideas on systematizing all aspects of industry - including accounting, production management, and wage systems.

In 1893 Taylor returned to Philadelphia, where during the depression of the mid-1890s he

established himself as one of the first management consultants to specialize in engineering and industry. While most of his work involved the introduction of management accounting plans in order to record and control manufacturing costs, he was also commissioned by the Simonds Rolling Machine Company and the Johnson Company to develop procedures for managing production and to use time studies for set times for piece-rate systems.

During this period he also became a leading advocate and practitioner of systematic management, and published the first of his important papers on management science in the “Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers” - "Notes on Belting" (1894) and "A Piece-Rate System" (1896).

Then, in 1898, Taylor was hired by the Bethlehem Iron Company (later [hired by] Bethlehem Steel Company*) to introduce a piece-rate wage system. This proved immediately successful, and during the next three years Taylor was gradually gained more and more influence and responsibility within the firm, reorganizing outside labour, and introducing cost accounting, production management, and time-study methods in the

company's machine shops.

At the same time, Taylor's research on metal-cutting steels resulted in the development of high-speed steel, a major industrial discovery with huge implications for future machine tool operations, and he also performed experiments in shoveling and pig-iron handling. All these measures had by 1900 made the Bethlehem plant a showpiece for innovative management, but within the next few months internal managerial rivalries and the disruption to industrial relations caused by Taylor's methods had brought him into disfavour with Bethlehem's owners, and in April 1901 they both dismissed Taylor and decided to sell the company.

On leaving Bethlehem, the 45-year-old Taylor effectively retired from industry, and devoted his time and money to the promotion of the principles of scientific management, both through lectures at universities and professional societies, and by two more highly

influential technical papers, "Shop Management" (1903) and "On the Art of Cutting Metals" (1906).

Taylor's message was also carried to the industrial workplaces across America and Europe by the work of his many disciples, the most notable being [disciple was] Gilbreth*.

In 1911, his standard lecture was rewritten and published as a short book: “The Principles of Scientific Management.”  It was an immediate bestseller and went on to become the most popular book on business and industry of the 1900-50 period. 

Taylor's ideas were embraced across Europe and Russia, influencing among others [influenced] Lenin* and [influenced] Trotsky*.

Assessment:  Though the Taylor system of scientific management, which attracted an increasing number of devotees amongst management during the early 20th century, provoked resentment and opposition from labor when carried to extremes, its value in rationalizing production was indisputable and its impact on the development of mass-production techniques immense.

Oneliner: FW Taylor, inventor of scientific management

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