1900 - 1920s faith in
technology, systematization.
"the cult of
efficiency" "efficiency craze."
Frederick Winslow
Taylor,
"scientific
management" or “Taylorism”
born 1859 wealthy Philly
family;
laborer Midvale Steel
Co.
age 30, chief engineer
at Midvale.
over 50,000 experiments
- ways to improve steel-cutting;
variable speed of
electric
motors, changing feed & speed of alloy cutting tools –
“high-speed”
steel.
rearranged factory
layout.
disturbed by
"soldiering"
- concluded 2/3rds of time wasted. 1882, experiments with supervising
work.
Assumption - all workers
basically lazy; money as motivation; "time & motion
studies".
Taylor, "In the
past, the man has been first; in the future, the system must be
first."
systematic (?) analysis
of work process, (for example, shoveling loads of pig-iron);
dramatic increase
efficiency
– allegedly two to three times more efficient;
"the one best way
to do work",
"science of
shovelling",
140 men do work
previously requiring 600.
Stopwatch –
scientific
(?) basis for setting piece rates. extra "allowances" of up to 75% of
time.
better cost accounting,
inventory management, centralized planning of production - "job
cards" & "instruction cards" - reform middle management.
1911 Principles of
Scientific Management_ -, translated into French, German, Russian, Italian,
Japanese.
Labor
tension;
strike of metal workers
1911 at govt's Watertown Arsenal - petition, "The very unsatisfactory
condtiions which have prevailed reached an acute stage this afternoon when a
man was seen to use a stop watch on one of the molders. This we believe to be the limit of our
endurance. it is humiliating to
us, who have always tried to give the govt the best that was in us. This method is un-American in
principle."
Congressional
investigation,
Taylor trained
students -
200 US companies (manufacture, department stores, railroads, banks &
construction).
Eastern Rate Case -
1911.
Frank Gilbreth.
Bricklayer -
"You ain't
smart, you're just too damned lazy to bend over!" - 120 to 350 bricks per
hour.
Lillian Gilbreth,
"micromotion".<
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"chronocyclograph&qu
ot;,
17 elementary
movements called
"therbligs";
consultants to
industry;
Frank & Lillian
Gilbreth 12 children, Cheaper by the Dozen:
"Dad would walk
into a factory like the Pierce Arrow auto plant and announce that he could
speed up production by one-fourth - and then he'd do it, too. Dad always practiced what he preached,
and it was impossible to tell where his scientific management company ended and
his family life began. Our house
was a sort of school for scientific management & elimination of wasted
motions. Dad took moving pictures
of us children washing dishes, so he could figure out how we could reduce our
motions & hurry through the task.
Dad installed work charts in the bathrooms. Every child was required to initial the charts in the
morning after he had brushed his teeth, taken a bath & made his bed. At night, each child had to weigh
himself, plot the figure on a graph, and initial the work charts again after he
had done his homework and brushed his teeth. It was regimentation, all right - but bear in mind the
trouble
most parents have in getting just one child off to school, and multiply it by
twelve - some regimentation was necessary to prevent bedlam. Dad even showed us the most efficient
way to take a bath - run the soap up one side of your body, down the other,
then a few strokes on the front and back, and you're done. Yes, at home or on the job, Dad was
always the efficiency expert. He
buttoned his vest from the bottom up, instead of top down, because bottom up
took only three seconds and top down took seven. For a while, Dad even tried shaving with two razors, but he
finally gave that up - he grumbled, ‘I can save 44 seconds, but I wasted
two minutes this morning putting this bandage on my throat.’ It wasn't the slashed throat that
really bothered him - it was the two minutes."
1908 Penn State
Univ. –
industrial engineering program.
- personnel management -
Elton Mayo, Western
Electric - 1930s "Hawthorne experiments";