NICMAR
Thoughts and Theories of
Scientific Management
Submitted By:
Sudhir Kabra (221077)
Kirti Kaushal (221081)
Mukul Mishra (221097)
Abhishek Navander (221111)
National Institute of Construction
Management and Research
Thoughts and Theories of
Scientific Management
Scientific Management is a term coined in 1910 to describe the system of industrial
management created and promoted by Frederick W. Taylor (1856– 1915) and his followers.
Though Taylor had used the term informally to describe his contributions to factory or "shop"
management, Morris L. Cooke, a friend and professional associate, and Louis Brandeis, a
prominent attorney, deliberately chose the adjective "scientific" to promote their contention
that Taylor's methods were an alternative to railroad price increases in a rate case they were
preparing for the Interstate Commerce Commission. The term also came to mean any system
of organization that clearly spelled out the functions of individuals and groups. With even
less fidelity to the original meaning, it has been used to describe any situation where jobs are
subdivided and individuals perform repetitive tasks.
Origins
Early attempts to study behaviour in organizations came from a desire by industrial
efficiency experts to answer this question: What can be done to get workers to do more work
in less time? It is not surprising that attempts to answer this question were made at the
beginning of the twentieth century, since this was a period of rapid industrialization and
technological change in the United States. As engineers attempted to make machines more
efficient, it was natural to focus efforts on the human side—making people more productive,
too.
The nineteenth-century factory system was characterized by ad hoc organization,
decentralized management, informal relations between employers and employees, and
casually defined jobs and job assignments. By the end of the nineteenth century, however,
increased competition, novel technologies, pressures from government and labour, and a
growing consciousness of the potential of the factory had inspired a wide-ranging effort to
improve organization and management. The focus of this activity was the introduction of
carefully defined procedures and tasks. Historians have labelled these innovations
"systematic management."
The central figure in this movement was the American engineer, inventor, and
management theorist Frederick W. Taylor. Born in 1856 to an aristocratic Philadelphia
family, Taylor started his career in the machine shop of the Midvale Steel Company in 1878,
rose rapidly, and began to introduce novel methods. In the next decade he devised numerous
organizational and technical innovations, including a method of timing workers with a
stopwatch to calculate optimum times. After a brief career as the manager of a paper
company, Taylor became a self-employed consultant, devoted to improving plant
management.
During these years Taylor, an 1883 engineering graduate of the Stevens Institute of
Technology, also became a major figure in the engineering profession, whose adherents
sought an identity based on rigorous formal education, mutually accepted standards of
behaviour, and social responsibility. In factories, mines, and railroad yards, engineers rejected
the experiential knowledge of the practitioner for scientific experimentation and analysis.
They became the principal proponents of systematic management.
In the 1890s, Taylor became the most ambitious and vigorous proponent of systematic
management. As a consultant he introduced accounting systems that permitted managers to
use operating records with greater effectiveness, production systems that allowed managers to
know more precisely what was happening on the shop floor, time studies to determine what
workers were able to do, piece-rate systems to encourage employees to follow instructions,
and many related measures. Between 1898 and 1901, as a consultant to the Bethlehem Iron
Company (later Bethlehem Steel), Taylor introduced all of his systems and engaged in a
vigorous plan of engineering re-search. This experience was the capstone of his creative
career. Two developments were of special importance. His discovery of "high-speed steel,"
which improved the performance of metal cutting tools, assured his fame as an inventor, and
his efforts to introduce systematic methods led to an integrated view of managerial
innovation. By 1901, Taylor had fashioned scientific management from systematic
management.
As the events of Taylor's career indicate, systematic management and scientific
management were intimately related. They had common roots, attracted the same kinds of
people, and had the same objectives. Their differences also stand out. Systematic
management was diffuse and utilitarian, a number of isolated measures that did not add up to
a larger whole. Scientific Bethlehem, Taylor resolved to devote his time and ample fortune
to promoting both. His first extensive report on his work, "Shop Management," published in
1903 in the journal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, portrayed an integrated
complex of systematic ma Scientific management, also called Taylorism or the Classical
Perspective, is a method in management theory that determines changes to improve labour
productivity. The idea was first coined by Frederick Winslow Taylor in The Principles of
Scientific Management. Taylor believed that decisions based upon tradition and rules of
thumb should be replaced by precise procedures developed after careful study of an
individual at work.
In management literature today, the greatest use of the concept of Taylorism is as a
contrast to a new, improved way of doing business. In political and sociological terms,
Taylorism can be seen as the division of labour pushed to its logical extreme, with a
consequent de-skilling of the worker and dehumanisation of the workplace.
Overview
General approach
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Select workers with appropriate abilities for each job.
Training for standard task.
Planning work and eliminating interruptions.
Wage incentive for increase output
Standard method for performing each job.
Contributions
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Scientific approach to business management and process improvement
Importance of compensation for performance
Began the careful study of tasks and jobs
Importance of selection and training
Elements
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Labour is defined and authority/responsibility is legitimised/official
Positions placed in hierarchy and under authority of higher level
Selection is based upon technical competence, training or experience
Actions and decisions are recorded to allow continuity and memory
Management is different from ownership of the organization
Managers follow rules/procedures to enable reliable/predictable behaviour
Mass production methods
Taylorism is often mentioned along with Fordism, because it was closely associated
with mass production methods in manufacturing factories. Taylor's own name for his
approach was scientific management. This sort of task-oriented optimisation of work tasks
is nearly ubiquitous today in industry, and has made most industrial work menial, repetitive,
tedious and depressing; this can be noted, for instance, in assembly lines and fast-food
restaurants. Ford's arguments began from his observation that, in general, workers forced to
perform repetitive tasks work at the slowest rate that goes unpunished. This slow rate of work
(which he called "soldiering", but might nowadays be termed by those in charge as "loafing"
or "malingering" or by those on the assembly line as "getting through the day"), he opined,
was based on the observation that, when paid the same amount, workers will tend to do the
amount of work the slowest among them does: this reflects the idea that workers have a
vested interest in their own well-being, and do not benefit from working above the defined
rate of work when it will not increase their compensation. He therefore proposed that the
work practice that had been developed in most work environments was crafted, intentionally
or unintentionally, to be very inefficient in its execution. From this he posited that there was
one best method for performing a particular task, and that if it were taught to workers, their
productivity would go up.
Taylor introduced many concepts that were not widely accepted at the time. For
example, by observing workers, he decided that labour should include rest breaks so that the
worker has time to recover from fatigue. He proved this with the task of unloading ore:
workers were taught to take rest during work and output went up.
Today's armies employ scientific management. Of the key points listed; a standard
method for performing each job, select workers with appropriate abilities for each job,
training for standard task, planning work and eliminating interruptions and wage incentive for
increase output. All but wage incentives for increased output are used by modern military
organizations. Wage incentives rather appear in the form of skill bonuses for enlistments.
Division of labour
Unless people manage themselves, somebody has to take care of administration, and
thus there is a division of work between workers and administrators. One of the tasks of
administration is to select the right person for the right job:
Now one of the very first requirements for a man who is fit to handle pig iron as a
regular occupation is that he shall be so stupid and so phlegmatic that he more nearly
resembles in his mental make-up the ox than any other type. The man who is mentally alert
and intelligent is for this very reason entirely unsuited to what would, for him, be the grinding
monotony of work of this character. Therefore the workman who is best suited to handling
pig iron is unable to understand the real science of doing this class of work. (Taylor 1911, 59)
This view – match the worker to the job – has resurfaced time and time again in
management theories.
Influence of Taylorism
Taylor’s approaches and his thoughts influenced several people and organisations during
his time. For several years, a powerful scientific management movement prevailed in USA and
some countries of the west. The remuneration and the productivity of the workers also improved
significantly. Some of the notable management authors and thinkers like Frank Gilbreth, Henry
Gantt, Emerson and Barth developed and refined Taylor’s ideas and approaches. A new scientific
culture of work management, time and motion studies, simplification and standardization,
production planning and control etc. took place in USA.
Henry L. Gantt
Gantt- like Taylor, a Mechanical Engineer- joined Taylor at the Midvale Steel Company
in 1887. He stayed with Taylor in his various assignments until 1901, when he formed his own
consulting engineering firm. Like Taylor, he emphasized the need for developing a mutuality of
interest between management and labour, a “harmonious cooperation.” In doing this, he stressed
the importance of teaching, of developing an understanding of systems on the part of both labour
and management, and of appreciating that “in all problems of management the human element is
the most important one.”
Gantt is perhaps best known for his development of graphics methods of describing plans
and making possible better managerial control. He emphasized the importance of time, as well as
cost, in planning and controlling work. This led eventually to the famous Gantt chart which is in
wide use today and was the forerunner of such modern techniques as the Program Evaluation and
Review Technique (PERT). The Gantt chart is regarded by some social historians as the most
important social invention of the twentieth century.
Frank and Lillian Gilbreth
The ideas of Taylor were also strongly supported and developed by the famous husband
and wife team of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth. Frank Gilbreth at the age of 27 in 1895 was a chief
superintendent of a building contracting firm and became a building contractor on his own shortly
thereafter. During this period, he became interested in wasted motions in work; by reducing the
number of bricklaying motions from 18 to 5, he made possible the doubling of a bricklayer’s
productivity with no greater expenditure of effort. His contracting firm work soon gave way
largely to consulting on improvement of human productivity. After meeting Taylor in 1907, he
combined his ideas with Taylor’s to put scientific management into effect.
Lillian Gilbreth was one of the earliest industrial psychologists and received her doctor’s
degree in this field in 1915. After her husband’s untimely death in 1924, she carried on his
consulting business and was widely acclaimed as the “first lady of management” throughout her
long life, which ended in 1972 when she was 93. Frank Gilbreth long emphasized that in applying
scientific management principles, we must look at workers first and understand their personalities
and needs. Gilbreth came to the conclusion that it is not the monotony of work that causes so
much worker dissatisfaction but, rather, management’s lack of interest in workers.
The Diffusion of Scientific Management
After 1901, Taylor devoted his time to publicizing his work and attracting clients,
whom he would refer to as trusted lieutenants, such as Henry L. Gantt, Carl G. Barth, Morris
L. Cooke, and Frank B. Gilbreth. Taylor and his followers emphasized the importance of
introducing the entire system. Most manufacturers, however, only wanted solutions to
specific problems. They were particularly drawn to time study and the incentive wage,
seemingly the most novel features of Taylor's system, which they had hoped would raise
output and wean employees from organized labour. Taylor and his followers had little
sympathy for unions and were slow to realize the implications of this course.
By 1910, the metal trade unions and the American Federation of Labour (AFL) had
become outspoken enemies of scientific management and Taylor and his followers were
embroiled in a controversy that would continue for another five years. These developments
had a substantial influence on Taylor's efforts to publicize his work.
To respond to opportunities like the 1911 rate case hearings, as well as the union
attacks, Taylor (with Cooke's assistance) prepared a new account of his system that he called
The Principles of Scientific Management (1911). He embraced the term "scientific
management," made time study its centrepiece, and used it as a metaphor for the system as a
whole.
Taylor argued that he had discovered universal "principles" of management:
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The substitution of scientific for "rule-of-thumb" methods
The "scientific selection and training of the workmen,"
An equal division of work between managers and workers. To implement the
principles successfully, managers and workers had to undergo a "complete revolution
in mental attitude."
The Principles of Scientific Management was an immediate success. Its simplicity,
colourful anecdotes, and insistence that the details of factory management were applicable to
other activities captured the imaginations of readers. Translated into many languages, it
became the best-selling business book of the first half of the twentieth century.
Two additional developments greatly extended Taylor's influence in the following years.
First, other writers restated his principles in more inclusive terms and explored their
implications. The most notable example was Henri Fayol, a prominent French mine manager
who discussed the functions of top executives in several technical papers and in General and
Industrial Administration (1916). Though Fayol operated independently of Taylor, he
demonstrated that Taylor's ideas applied to the entire organization, not just the factory.
Second, a growing corps of consultants installed scientific management in industry. Gantt,
Barth, Cooke, Gilbreth, and others closely associated with Taylor initially dominated this
activity, but outsiders such as Harrington Emerson and Charles Bedaux, who took a more
flexible and opportunistic approach to the application of Taylor's methods, became
increasingly popular.
Scientific Management in Industry
Between 1901 and 1915, the year Taylor died, his close associates introduced
scientific management in at least 181 American factories. Some of the plants were large and
modern, like those of the Pullman Railcar and Remington Typewriter companies; others were
small and technologically primitive. Most of the 181 companies fell into one of two broad
categories: first were those whose activities required the movement of large quantities of
materials between numerous work stations (such as textile mills, railroad repair shops, and
automobile plants); the second group consisted of innovative firms, mostly small, that were
already committed to managerial innovation. Executives at these latter firms were attracted to
Taylor's promise of social harmony and improved working conditions.
The history of scientific management in these 181 plants provides little support for the
contention, common to many later accounts, that Taylor's central concern was the individual
employee. Consultants devoted most of their time and energies to machine operations, tools
and materials, production schedules, routing plans, and record systems. In one-third of the
factories, these activities generated such controversy that time and motion studies were never
undertaken.
In others, such as the Franklin automobile company and several textile mills, the
installation consisted almost exclusively of improvements in production planning and
scheduling. As a result, one-half or more of all employees were passive participants. They
may have experienced fewer delays, used different tools, or worked for less powerful
supervisors, but their own activities were unaffected. Taylor promised that those workers
directly affected would receive higher wages and have less reason for conflict with their
supervisors. Most assessments of these claims have concluded that Taylor promised more
than he could deliver.
The experiences of the 181 firms suggest that union leaders and other critics also
exaggerated the dangers of scientific management. One example was the argument that
skilled workers would lose their autonomy and opportunities for creativity. In the relatively
few cases where skilled workers were timed and placed on an incentive wage, they devoted
more time to their specialties, while less-skilled employees took over other activities. Critics
were on firmer ground when they argued that scientific management would lead to speedups,
rate cuts, and the elimination of employees whose skills or motivation were below average. In
theory, only the most inferior workers had to worry. But many employers were less
scrupulous or less patient. They gave lip service to Taylor's idea of an interrelated whole, but
looked to the employees for immediate results. The association of time study with rate cuts
sparked a famous strike at Watertown Arsenal in 1911, and was the apparent cause of strikes
at the Joseph and Feiss Company and at three American Locomotive Company plants.
Outside the Taylor circle the problem was even more widespread.
In summary, the available data from these early examples suggest that
(1) First-line supervisors lost much of their authority to higher-level managers and their
staffs;
(2) The proportion of the work day devoted to production increased as delays were
eliminated;
(3) Fewer decisions depended on personal judgments, biases, and subjective evaluations;
(4) Individual jobs were more carefully de-fined and some workers exercised less discretion;
(5) In most cases earnings rose, but there were enough exceptions to blur the effect;
(6) The level of skill required in production did not change, though the most highly skilled
employees, like foremen, lost some of their de facto managerial functions;
(7) Some unskilled jobs disappeared as improved scheduling and accounting reduced the
need for labourers.
Though the initial impact of scientific management would have seemed surprisingly
modest to a contemporary reader of The Principles, in retrospect it is clear that Taylor and his
associates provided a forecast and a blueprint for changes that would occur in most large
industrial organizations over the next quarter century.
After 1915, scientific management—usually features of scientific management rather
than the Taylor system—spread rapidly in the United States. There were undoubtedly wide
variations in practice and, in the work of Charles Bedaux and others like him, efforts to
exploit time study and the incentive wage to achieve immediate cost reductions at the
workers' expense. But the surviving evidence suggests substantial continuity between the
early experiences, reviewed above, and those of the 1910s and 1920s. One ironic measure of
this continuity was the alliance between organized labour and scientific management that
emerged after Taylor's death. By the mid-1910s, union leaders, with considerable prodding
from Taylor's more liberal followers like Morris Cooke—realized that they had more to gain
than lose from scientific management. Experience had shown that supervisors, not workers,
were the real targets of scientific management and that the structured relationships
characteristic of scientifically managed plants was compatible with collective bargaining.
Criticism
Applications of scientific management sometimes fail to account for two inherent difficulties:
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It ignores individual differences: the most efficient way of working for one person may be
inefficient for another;
It ignores the fact that the economic interests of workers and management are rarely
identical, so that both the measurement processes and the retraining required by Taylor's
methods would frequently be resented and sometimes sabotaged by the workforce.
Both difficulties were recognised by Taylor, but are generally not fully addressed by
managers who only see the potential improvements to efficiency. Taylor believed that
scientific management cannot work unless the worker benefits. In his view management
should arrange the work in such a way that one is able to produce more and get paid more, by
teaching and implementing more efficient procedures for producing a product.
Although Taylor did not compare workers with machines, some of his critics use this
metaphor to explain how his approach to be made efficient by removing unnecessary or
wasted effort. However, some would say that this approach ignores the complications
introduced because workers are necessarily human: personal needs, interpersonal difficulties
and the very real difficulties introduced by making jobs so efficient that workers have no time
to relax. As a result, workers worked harder, but became dissatisfied with the work
environment. Some have argued that this discounting of worker personalities led to the rise of
labour unions.
It can also be said that the rise in labour unions is leading to a push on the part of
industry to accelerate the process of automation, a process that is undergoing a renaissance
with the invention of a host of new technologies starting with the computer and the Internet.
This shift in production to machines was clearly one of the goals of Taylorism, and represents
a victory for his theories.
However, tactfully choosing to ignore the still controversial process of automating
human work is also politically expedient, so many still say that practical problems caused by
Taylorism led to its replacement by the human relations school of management in 1930.
Others (Braverman 1974) insisted that human relations did not replace Taylorism but that
both approaches are rather complementary: Taylorism determining the actual organisation of
the work process and human relations helping to adapt the workers to the new procedures.
However, Taylor's theories were clearly at the root of a global revival in theories of
scientific management in the last two decades of the 20th century, under the moniker of
'corporate reengineering'. As such, Taylor's ideas can be seen as the root of a very influential
series of developments in the workplace, with the goal being the eventual elimination of
industry's need for unskilled, and later perhaps, even most skilled labour in any form, directly
following Taylor's recipe for deconstructing a process. This has come to be known as
commodification, and no skilled profession, even medicine, has proven to be immune from
the efforts of Taylor's followers, the 'reengineers', who are often called derogatory names
such as 'bean counters'.
Legacy
Scientific management was the first attempt to systematically treat management and
process improvement as a scientific problem. With the advancement of statistical methods,
the approach was improved and referred to as quality control in 1920s and 1930s. During the
1940s and 1950s, the body of knowledge for doing scientific management evolved into
Operations Research and management cybernetics. In the 1980s we had total quality
management, in the 1990s reengineering. Today's Six Sigma and Lean manufacturing could
be seen as new names for scientific management. In particular, Shigeo Shingo, one of the
creators of Lean Management who devoted his life to scientific management, says that the
Toyota Production System and Japanese management culture in general should be seen as
scientific management.
Peter Drucker sees Frederick Taylor as the creator of knowledge management, as the
aim of scientific management is to produce knowledge about how to improve work processes.
Although some have questioned whether scientific management is suitable only for
manufacturing, Taylor himself advocated scientific management for all sorts of work,
including the management of universities and government.
Scientific management has had an important influence in sports, where stop watches
and motion studies rule the day. (Taylor himself enjoyed sports –especially tennis and golf –
and he invented improved tennis racquets and improved golf clubs, although other players
liked to tease him for his unorthodox designs, and they did not catch on as replacements for
the mainstream implements.)
Conclusion
By the 1920s, self-conscious management, systematic planning, specialization of
function, and highly structured, formal relationships between managers and workers had
become the hallmarks of modern industry. These features of the twentieth-century factory
system were the legacy of systematic management and especially of Taylor and his disciples,
the most important contributors to the campaign for order and rationality in industry. In the
process of reorganizing the factory they made scientific management a malleable symbol of
the potential of modern organization for changing virtually every facet of contemporary life.
Case Study
1.
PATTERNS OF MANAGEMENT AT IBM
Thomas J. Watson, Jr.’s father, an admired industrialist in 1920s and 1930s, moved
IBM into punch card business. Watson, Jr., moved IBM into the computer field and provided
the vision leading to its fundamental growth against competition from giant companies such
as General Electric, RCA, Honey-well and Remington Rand.
After World War II, IMB grew quickly because of the demand for accounting
equipment using punch cards. But it was in the mid-1950s that computers, with their
recognized calculating power, became the buzzword of time.
What made IBM so successful was not technical innovation but marketing and
service. In the early days of computers, competitors were equal or better in providing
hardware. But many competitors fell short when it came to installing and servicing the
equipment.
The early computers were built around electronic tubes. A limiting factor was the
need to find people to run them. To satisfy this need, IBM turned to universities for help. A
new profession was born: programmers and systems engineers. Around 1958, working
against the resistance of IBM engineers, Watson insisted that electronic tubes be replaced by
transistors.
Watson attributes his success to selecting good people, integrating them into teams,
providing financial incentives, being concerned about the people, and having open
communication channels to them. The selection of people was based not on personal liking
but on competence. Another IBM policy was to provide job security – a policy that dates
back to the Great Depression. Employees, not just managers, were handsomely paid. Starting
in 1955, the company offered stock options that made many of them rich.
Watson, Sr., built an organization culture that is similar to Japanese practices. Sales
personnel had to wear shirts with starched collars. There was also a company song. But
Watson, Jr., relaxed the rules. Still, the older and the younger Watsons were perfectionists,
paying attention to details. The implicit principles were to value the individuals, make
customers satisfied, and go out of one’s way to do the right thing.
To instil these values, one has to manage by example. Training is also required. Yet
until 1950s, management training was rather primitive, compared with that at General
Electric. In 1966, however, it was ruled that people, in order to manage, had to attend the
management school. The early programs were based on Harvard’s case approach.
Another step creating a certain corporate culture was to establish an out-door policy.
After employees had discussed their concerns with their managers, they could go to
individuals at higher levels. In fact, Watson spent about a fifth of his time talking with people
who “walked through the open door.” This policy, of course, results in open communication
and counters the problems of top-management isolation so often found in companies.
Still another factor that contributed to the rather unique corporate culture was the
elimination of piece-work. This reduced the distinction between white- and blue-collars
workers. Also, starting in the late 1950s, all employees were paid salaries. In addition,
employees began to receive medical coverage and other benefits. The company also provided
for matching grants for contributions to schools and charities. These changes, too, helped to
reduce the distinction between managers and non-managers.
IBM has been very successful. But in late 1989, IBM announced that because of
changing market situations, it plans to restructure and cut 10,000 jobs. In 1991, John Akers,
IBM’s CEO, announced additional restructuring of the organization.
2.
THE CASE OF TOYOTA, A STEP AHEAD SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT
Over 100 years ago Frederick Winslow Taylor’s time studies and “laws and
principles” of scientific management changed how workers were paid, introduced a new
division of labour and expanded and strengthened the role of management. Frank and Lillian
Gilbreth’s motion studies focused on how the work was done, and how to eliminate
unneeded, fatiguing steps in any process.
They wanted “flow” manufacturing to take place but they did not want workers to
stop and think. And through their work productivity climbed substantially allowing Henry
Ford to produce an automobile in four days from iron ore to the finished car being put onto
the railroad cars. Modern manufacturing was born.
Both Taylor and the Gilbreth’s eliminated decision making processes from workers.
They recognized that when workers were undecided and stopped to think tension and fatigue
entered. Work was simplified and skills were automated. People were asked to “check their
brains at the door.”
The pressure for solving problems was then placed on management. But in the
process thousands of simple and small problems were neglected, quality suffered, worker’s
dignity suffered, and the workplace was dehumanized.
Workers in the West did repetitive tasks and became attendants of machines. Taylor
and Gilbreth wanted flow but workers here would stand and watch machines. It was deadly.
Dr. Shigeo Shingo, an independent consultant, and Taiichi Ohno, vice-president of
production at Toyota, restudied the work of Taylor, Ford and the Gilbreth’s and clearly
understood the power of flow manufacturing. They also discovered a powerful ‘missing
ingredient,” the worker on the factory floor is really the expert on the job, rarely ever asked to
be creatively involved in solving problems. To be internationally competitive this waste of
human resources had to end.
Shingo and Ohno the creators of The Toyota Production System/Lean like Taylor and
Gilbreth wanted both a productive workplace and flow manufacturing. They did not want the
worker to stand, wait and attend machines. They wanted workers to use both hands and move
continually working multi-machines in the factory.
“I have been to over 250 plants in these past twenty years. In America I still see
people standing and watching machines. I have never seen this at Toyota”.
“How in the world can you expect to get continuous improvement without worker
participation? How in the world can you attain six sigma without worker participation? How
in the world can you expect to have a lean organization without full worker participation”? Ohno
Impossible!
Many of you have run Kaizen Blitz activities and seen the success when people work
on teams focused on value adding and the elimination of wastes. What makes the Kaizen
Blitz successful and exciting is that you are getting teams of people working together to
improve the process and solving problems.
The individual is almost hopeless in his/her ability to bring meaningful change.
People are fearful and resist change. I meet so many people that have a million reasons why
something should not be done.
As Lean was created at Toyota the worker was directly involved:
1. Whenever a problem was detected the worker either pulled a chain or pushed a button
to stop the line – yes, they stopped other workers from working. Imagine the power
given to a worker to stop others from working. Toyota was serious. Defects will not
be passed onto the customer. The worker was asked to immediately detect the cause
of the problem, solve it and also get to the root cause so that the problem would not
occur again. Toyota wanted the exact same “Flow” as Taylor and Gilbreth. They did
not want the worker to think on the job except when a problem occurred. They
realized that the worker on the floor has brains and that those brains were required to
help solve problems.
2. Toyota also recognized that many problems could not be solved immediately so they
asked their workers to come up with small improvement ideas to help solve problems
around their work area. In fact, Toyota was getting 70 ideas per worker per year in
writing. And Toyota noted for making junk in 1960 became the world’s highest
quality producer, in fact, the richest automotive company in the world. Today,
Toyota’s stock is worth more than General Motors, Ford and Chrysler/Benz
combined.
And it all happened as they involved every person at Toyota in continuous
improvement activities.
Technicolor Corporation in Detroit two years ago received 250 suggestions with 113
implemented from around 1800 employees. This past year they received 16,999 with 7,443
implemented with no additional staffing to handle the ideas. They are small ideas and the
person who came up with the idea is the one who normally implements them either
themselves or in their work teams. Technicolor has saved over $10,000,000 from those ideas.
And imagine how the worker feels about themselves when they are respected for their
intelligence? And imagine how management now looks at those creative workers working for
them.
Yes, you can have flow manufacturing and also a lively creative work environment.
Taylor and Gilbreth were necessary and a vital part of America’s success but you
must update them. In order for us to compete with the Chinese and Indians, we must improve
every worker’s skill level and also ask them to participate in creative problem solving. It is
the only way that Lean will work. It is the only way to create a work environment for human
beings.