Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania. His father was a lawyer of Quaker Stock. He wanted to attend Harvard University, but poor eyesight forced him to consider an alternative career. In 1874, he became an apprentice patternmaker, gaining shop-floor experience that would inform the rest of his career.
Taylor moved to Midvale Steel, Philadelphia, in 1878 as a common laborer. Taylor rose from laborer to clerk, to machinist, to gang boss of the machinists, to supervisor of the machine shop, to master mechanic and to chief engineer, all in six year. Realizing that he lacked a scientific education, he enrolled in a home study. He obtained a degree in Mechanical Engineering through series of correspondence courses at the Stevens Institute of Technology in 1883. His twelve years at Midvale were years of experimentation that provided the basis for Taylor ideas about shop management.
When Taylor became supervisor at Midvale, he set out to determine what the workers ought to be able do with their equipment and materials. This became the beginning of what was to be named scientific management, that is, the use of scientific fact finding method to determine empirically the right ways to perform tasks.
Time study became the foundation of the Taylor system. Taylor's time study had two phases:
- Analytical phase: Each job was broken into as many simple movements as possible, useless movements were discarded. The quickest and best methods for each elementary movement were selected by observing the most skilled worker at each, and the movement was timed and recorded. To the recorded time, percentages were added to allow for unavoidable delays and for rest period.
- Constructive phase: This phase involved building a file of elementary movement and times to be used wherever possible on other jobs or classes of work. Further, this phase led to consideration of improvements in tools, machine, methods and the ultimate standardization of all elements surroundings and accompanying the job.
In his 1895 paper, Taylor proposed an incentives plan for paying labor. Under Taylor's plan, a rate-setting department planned the work and set rate or standard for each task. This rate moved the measurement of job performance from guesswork and tradition to a more rational basis. Once the standard was set, the incentive payment rate worked two ways: those who did not meet the standard received and ordinary rate of pay, and those who did attain the standard received an extraordinary pay.
Taylor married Louise Spooener in 1884, and in 1890, he left Midvale to become general manager of the Manufacturing Investment Company (MIC), a converter of wood products into paper fiber. In 1893, Taylor resigned with a contempt for fanciers who were interested only in “making money quickly” and had”no pride of manufacture”. But fortunately, he realized his short coming in accounting. With his newly acquired knowledge and his engineering background, Taylor decided to become a consulting engineer for management. Some of his clients were Simonds Rolling Machine Company, Steel Motor Company (Johnstown, Pennsylvania), and Bethlehem Steel Company (South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania).
Frederick and Louis Taylor were unable to have children of their own. In 1901 they adopted three children, Kempton, Robert and Elizabeth.
Taylor demonstrated his talents as an inventor and engineer at Midvale and Bethlehem. He invented a process for cutting metal with high speed with Maunsell-White. The Taylor-White process was patented in 1900, and Taylor's share of royalties amounted to some $50.000, before the patent was nullified in 1909.
In 1906 Taylor became the president of the prestigious American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and he was asked to teach scientific management at Harvard in 1908. He was never entirely happy about teaching his system in a class room because in his opinion, his system could be learned only in the shop. For all his lectures, Taylor never accepted a penny of reimbursement, not even for traveling expenses. Taylor also found his system getting some extra ordinary free publicity.
Taylor died in the hospital one day after his fifty-ninth birthday because of pneumonia. His grave site at the West Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia, bears this epitaph: “Frederick W. Taylor, Father of Scientific Management”.
