Frederick W. Taylor: biography of this engineer and researcher

Frederick W. Taylor has been a key figure in the development of modern industry, in particular, and organizations in general.

This American engineer and inventor is considered the father of scientific management and his contributions have made the industry the sector as productive as it is today, moving from artisanal to mass production, creating the modern culture of consumption.

Next we will discover the life of this researcher through a biography of Frederick W. Taylor, and we will know his main contributions to industrial production and work management.

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Brief biography of Frederick W. Taylor

Frederick Winslow Taylor was born on March 20, 1856 in Germantown, Pennsylvania., USA. He grew up in a family with a good economic position, which contributed significantly to his education, having access to university studies.

Youth and visual problems

Frederick W. Taylor began his law studies at Phillips Exeter Academy, in New Hampshire, although later

was accepted into Harvard University. This could have been the start of a prosperous career as a lawman, but unfortunately his life dealt him a tremendous setback.

Already from adolescence he was showing symptoms of a disease that affected his eyesight, which worsened when he was at Harvard and he had to leave his degree halfway through. In addition, this rare disease was accompanied by physical problems, which caused him to have a weak body that made it impossible for him to participate in sports activities that his companions.

But despite these problems, Taylor, far from becoming bitter, began to reflect on it and how it could be improved. the physical response of athletes using instruments and tools that already existed or, at least, using some method palliative. These first reflections would be fundamental in his way of thinking, associating better performance and productivity with the application of certain strategies.

Career path

Fortunately, in 1875 Taylor recovered from his visual problems.. At this time he entered as a worker in an industrial steel company located in Philadelphia. Some years later, in 1878, he worked for the Midvale Steel Company, in Utah, where he quickly rose through the ranks and held several tasks: machinist, group leader, foreman, chief foreman and director of the drawing office up to the position of engineer boss.

In 1881, at just 25 years old, Frederick W. Taylor began to introduce the idea of ​​"time study" at the Midvale Steel Company. Already from a very young age, he characterized himself as an extremely observant and meticulous person and, being in the company, he dedicated himself to observing how the operators in charge of cutting the material worked metal.

Taylor he concentrated on paying attention to how the workers did the whole process, noticing each step followed, however simple and banal it may seem. From his observation, he conceived the notion of breaking down work into simpler steps in order to be able to analyze them more exhaustively. For him, it was essential that these steps had a specific and strict execution time, well timed.

The scientific organization of work

Still working at the Midvale Steel Company, in 1883 Taylor earned his mechanical engineering degree from Stevens Institute of Technology. He must be credited with obtaining that title, since he studied every night and, during the day, went to his job in the company. Thus he got the position of chief engineer in the company, and thereafter he designed and built a new machine shop to increase productivity.

Thanks to his ideas of close observation at work, Taylor he contributed to the emergence of a new conception of work: the scientific organization of work. Intending to further investigate this idea, Taylor decided to quit his job at the Midvale Steel Company and joined the Manufacturing Investment Company, where he worked for three years and would develop a new approach to engineering more directed towards consulting the management.

His innovative vision of work opened up many career opportunities, and as a result, Frederick W. Taylor had the opportunity to participate in various business projects. The last company he was involved with was the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, where he continued to develop innovative processes to optimize, in this case, processes related to working with cast iron and make pallets

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Retirement, last years and death

At age 45, Frederick W. Taylor decided to retire from the workplace, although he continued to offer lectures to disseminate his principles of scientific labor administration. Taking advantage of this retirement, he spent time with his wife, Louise M. Spooner and his three adopted children, residing in Philadelphia between 1904 and 1914.

During this decade Taylor received several awards for his idea of ​​time control in industrial production. In 1906 the American Society of Mechanical Engineers named him its president and, that same year, He received an honorary doctorate in science from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1912 he appeared before a special committee of the Congress of the United States of America to expose the characteristics of the machinery management system that he had created.

Frederick W. Taylor died on March 21, 1915 in Philadelphia at the age of 59 the day before. He was a hard worker and was always interested in publicizing his scientific work organization system, presenting it at different institutes and universities.

Scientific Management Theory

The major contribution of Frederick W. Taylor to the field of industrial engineering is his scientific management theory. This is based on generating a system in which employee and employer are able to receive as much benefit as possible. To achieve this, it is necessary for the administration to adequately train its workers so that, thus, the performance of it is better and better, increasing the quality, the efficiency and the production.

Taylor considered that each worker had their own abilities which should be taken into account when ordering them to perform a certain task. Furthermore, through constant training, these skills that they are already good at basicly can be improved in such a way that they are perfected and production is increased as a consequence of it.

In Taylor's time the most common conception was that the objectives of employees and bosses could not coincide. However, Taylor argues that this should not be the case, since it is possible to direct both groups towards the same common objective, which is greater and more efficient productivity.

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Main system errors

For Taylor, there were a series of errors that were widespread in industry in the 19th century and that had to be corrected if greater productivity was to be achieved. Among the main ones we find:

1. Bad management

Industrial administrations were performing poorly due to their mismanagement. There were downtimes between the tasks that the employees performed, with lower productivity and little use of time.

2. Methods that generated exhaustion

Many of the methods that were still used in the industry turned out to be of very little use. The worker invested a lot of effort but the system was inefficient, causing that effort to end up being scrapped.

3. Management was unaware of their company's processes

It was extremely common for management to be unfamiliar with their own company's processes, hoping that the company would magically come to fruition.

The management had little idea what the tasks performed in the factory were, and he also did not know how much time each of the activities they performed consumed.

4. non-uniform methods

The work methods used in the factories were not uniform, which made the final process very inefficient. Each task within the factory could be subject to different standards, causing the quality of the final product to be irregular.

Principles of scientific labor administration

For Taylor, the idea of ​​scientific labor administration is based on four fundamental principles, which are the following:

1. scientific organization of work

The scientific organization of work is a principle that is directly linked to the action of those who are in charge of administrative tasks. They are the ones who must make sure that inefficient methods are changed and guarantee that workers will comply with the agreed times for carrying out each task.

Taylor considered that, in order to comply with this principle, the administration must first know what are the times associated with each activity, what delays are involved, why they occur and what specific actions are performed by the workers in each task.

2. Worker choice and training

Unlike what many factories were doing at the time, Frederick W. Taylor defended that each worker should be chosen based on their specific abilities and skills. It was not at all appropriate to expect that, by the simple fact of starting work, the operator would be acquiring the skills on his own account.

If what is desired is to have a high degree of efficiency and quality in production, it is necessary to hire workers who have certain basic skills and have them take on tasks in which they will know defend. A worker who feels comfortable with what he does is a worker who has well-being, motivating them to do the task assigned to them well..

By breaking down the entire production process into simpler and more specific tasks, it is possible to identify the ideal skills for each of them. Thus, by identifying job candidates who possessed such aptitudes, they can be assigned tasks in which they they will perform adequately, thus preventing them from feeling frustrated by the uncertainty of not knowing if they will find out do.

3. Cooperation

For the performance of the company to be as desired, there must be cooperation between workers and managers. Although it is the workers who operate on the system physically, employees and employers must pursue the same objective: an increase in production and efficiency.

That is why Taylor considered that the remuneration of workers must be related to their productionThat is, they are paid based on the amount of work he has done. Knowing that the more tasks completed or products produced, the more the worker will earn, according to Taylor, he will be motivated and work harder to get paid better. This is also intended to avoid work simulation, that is, that employees reduce their productivity or do not work at all.

According to the Taylorian mentality, if the worker is paid by the hour, he is more likely to reduce his activity if he is not watched. by the boss, limiting himself to doing the minimum to avoid being fired, stretching the breaks and waiting for the workday to end. By introducing this system in which you are charged for what is produced, employees will look for ways to behave in the most efficient way. knowing that this is directly related to obtaining higher income.

Thus, Taylor argues that to achieve cooperation between workers and bosses it is necessary to pay each operator for the unit of work carried out but, in addition, a coordinating group of the operators. The coordinators must have in-depth knowledge of the activities carried out by the workers, so that they have the moral authority to give them orders and, at the same time, can train them in more things about the task they perform in specific.

Foremen must attend to specific areas in the production chain in order to take over coordination of all workers and their tasks. Through its methodical and meticulous examination of the entire process, it will be possible to perfect the system, detect critical issues and assigning new tasks to workers who are not performing at their best in their current job job.

4. Division of labor between managers and workers

This last principle of Taylor's is truly innovative for his time, since it implies that it is essential that the workload between managers and workers be equivalent. He believes that a fair and coherent division of labor must be sought if what is desired is to achieve maximum efficiency in all processes.

The administration must be in charge of all the elements that have to do with the analysis of situations, generate plans that are linked to the future of the company in addition to seeking strategies to achieve greater benefits.

Contributions by Frederick W. Taylor

Taylor was the first to propose a scientific approach to the work. His experience being both an operator and a workshop manager allowed him to understand that workers were not being as productive as they could be and that, as a consequence, the performance of the company was diminishing. It was also thanks to this that he understood that only by involving both management and operators in the organization would it be possible to improve its production.

He was against each worker taking charge of producing the product from start to finish, that is, in the traditional artisan way. For example, Taylor did not consider it logical that in a shoe factory all the workers make shoes, that is, cut the soles, sew the fabrics, paint them, varnish them, make the laces... The logical thing was that each worker would make a piece, within the time required, there would also be those who would be in charge of sewing, putting the pieces together, putting them in boxes and so on. tasks.

The traditional way implied a lot of waste of time, while the proposal by Taylor in the form of an assembly line, in which hundreds of units could be made of the same product at the same time, implied lower costs and higher productivity per unit of time. Having each worker do a simple task that they were good at greatly streamlined the entire process.

With this, he raised the need to plan work, something that, although nowadays it is obvious, at that time it was not common at all. Taylor was the first to think that, to create any product in the shortest time, it was necessary to plan the steps that different tasks should be followed and assigned to each worker, making all of them responsible for the product final.

He also introduced the idea of ​​personnel selection, something that is essential in today's human resources departments. It was not possible to expect that all the workers of a company knew how to do everything or that they had the same performance. They needed to be selected and placed to perform tasks in which they already had a certain management or that they are good at it to motivate themselves and, thus, have greater productivity and efficiency.

Whenever possible, Taylor advocated that workers should be constantly trained, no matter how good they were at a certain task. The objective of this was to improve production and be able to recycle workers as much as possible. The best thing that both employees and managers could do was get training on tasks specific to be attractive to companies, something that is essential in the labor philosophy current.

Frederick W. Taylor contributed to a greater role for administrators. Before, the normal thing was that they could hardly do anything and all the responsibility of the industrial process fell into the hands of the operators. However, with the ideas of planning the activities, control of the work and the selection of the staff as ways to increase production, managers were having more weight in the companies. This would be the seed for the creation of industrial engineering as a scientific discipline.

Bibliographic references

• Turán, H. (2015). Taylor's Scientific Management Principles: Contemporary Issues in Personnel Selection Period. Journal of Economics, Business and Management. 3 (11). 1102-1105..
• Uddin, N. (2015). Evolution of modern management through Taylorism: An adjustment of Scientific Management comprising behavioral science. Proceeds Computer Science 62.578 – 584.
• Wren, D. (2011). The Centennial of Frederick W. Taylor's The Principles of Scientific Management: A Retrospective Commentary. Journal of Business and Management. 17 (1).. 11-22.