History 398
Lecture 16
TAYLOR AND FORD:
CONTRASTS AND
CONNECTIONS
“It’s high-speed steel and the Ford car
that’s destroyed the machinists’ union
…”
History 398
Fall 2004
Flow of Production and Flow
of Information
Unfortunately, the folk wisdom that surrounds
Henry Ford’s life and work has precluded any
serious scholarship on the day-to-day operations
of the Ford Motor Company. But the fact is that
the company kept impressive records and
controlled and manipulated information far more
creatively than any other company dealt with in
this study.
David Hounshell, From American System...
History 398
Fall 2004
Production Flow
organization of work
H.L. Arnold & F.L. Faurote,
Ford Methods and the Ford Shops (1915)
History 398
Fall 2004
History 398
Fall 2004
Flow of Production and Flow
of Information
• Arnold's & Faurote's emphasis on the
need for information
• Who Arnold and Faurote were
• Taylorism and Fordism, the two
hallmarks of modern production
History 398
Fall 2004
History 398
Fall 2004
F.W. Taylor and
Scientific Management
• Management studies and
reform in late 19th century
• Frederick Winslow Taylor
(1856-1915)
Except in matters of degree (e.g., the operations researchers tend to use
rather high-powered mathematics), it is not clear that operations research
embodies any philosophy different from that of scientific management.
Charles Babbage and Frederick Taylor will have to be made, retroactively,
charter members of the operations research societies.
Herbert Simon, The New Science of Management Decision (1960)
History 398
Fall 2004
1874-78 apprenticeship at Ferrell & Jones
1878-90 Midvale Steel, apprentice -> Chief Engineer (1884)
1883 Mech. E. Stevens Institute
1890-93 General Manager, Mfg. Investment Company
1893-1901 Independent Consulting
1898 Bethlehem Steel, with Henry L. Gantt, Carl G. Barth
1901 begins to speak publicly about “task management”
1903 “Shop Management” (Trans. ASME 24)
1909-14 Harvard Business School, consulting with Army
and Navy
1910 Eastern Rates Case, Louis Brandeis
1911 Watertown Arsenal
1911-12 Congressional hearings
History 398
Fall 2004
Scientific Management
Scientific management is not any efficiency device. ... It is not
a new system of figuring costs; it is not a new system of paying
men ... it is not holding a stop watch on a man and writing
things down about him ... it is not motion study nor an analysis
of the movements of men. ... It is not divided foremanship ...
it is not any of the devices which the average man calls to mind
when scientific management is spoken of. ... In this sense,
scientific management involves a complete mental revolution on
the part of the workingman [and an ... equally complete
revolution on the part of those on management's side. ... And
without this complete mental revolution on both sides scientific
management does not exist..
[F.W. Taylor before House committee, 1912, quoted by Daniel Nelson,
A Mental Revolution, frontispiece and p. 5]
History 398
Fall 2004
Principles of Scientific
Management (1911)
• a solution of the "labor problem"
• "soldiering"
• "four great underlying principles"
– development of true science - the "one best
way"
History 398
Fall 2004
"One Best Way"
Now, among the various methods and
implements used in each element of each trade
there is always one method and one implement
which is quicker and better than any of the
rest. And this one best method and best
implement can only be discovered or developed
through a scientific study and analysis of all of
the methods and implements in use, together
with accurate, minute motion and time study.
This involves the gradual substitution of science
for rule of thumb throughout the mechanic
arts. (p.25)
History 398
Fall 2004
History 398
Fall 2004
"One Best Way"
Taylor and his immediate disciples were engineers
[who] ... accepted without question the engineering
approach that had already proved itself in the
design of physical objects, and they extended it to
the analysis and control of the activities of people.
The essential core of scientific management,
regarded as a philosophy, was the idea that human
activity could be measured, analyzed, and controlled
by techniques analogous to those that had proved
successful when applied to physical objects.
(Aitken, Taylorism at Watertown Arsenal, 15-16)
History 398
Fall 2004
Frank Gilbreth
time and
motion studies
History 398
Fall 2004
Principles of Scientific
Management (1911)
• a solution of the "labor problem"
• "soldiering"
• "four great underlying principles"
–
–
–
–
development of true science - the "one best way"
scientific selection of the workman
scientific education and development of worker
intimate, friendly relations with workers based
on management's sharing task of productivity
History 398
Fall 2004
Division of Responsibility
This writer asserts as a general principle ... that in almost all
of the mechanic arts the science which underlies each act of
each workman is so great and amounts to so much that the
workman who is best suited to actually doing the work is
incapable of fully understanding this science, without the
guidance and help of those who are working with him or over
him, either through lack of education or through insufficient
mental capacity. In order that the work may be done in
accordance with scientific laws, it is necessary that there shall
be a far more equal division of the responsibility between the
management and the workmen than exists under any of the
ordinary types of management. (25-26)
History 398
Fall 2004
Cooperation between
management and worker
... to work according to scientific laws, the
management must take over and perform much of
the work which is now left to the men; almost every
act of the workman should be preceded by one or
more preparatory acts of the management which
enable him to do his work better and quicker than
he otherwise could. ... This close, intimate,
personal cooperation between the management and
the men is of the essence of modern scientific or
task management.
History 398
Fall 2004
Principles of Scientific
Management (1911)
•
a solution of the "labor problem"
• "soldiering"
• "four great underlying principles"
– development of true science - the "one best way"
– scientific selection of the workman
– scientific education and development of worker
– intimate, friendly relations with workers based on
management's sharing task of productivity
• not mentioned as principles but centrally important:
"differential piece rate", "functional foremanship"
History 398
Fall 2004
History 398
Fall 2004
F.W. Taylor and Scientific
Management
• Management studies and reform in
late 19th century
• Taylor (1856-1915)
• Taylor's Legacy
History 398
Fall 2004
1911 (Gilbreth) Society for the Promotion of the Science
of Management
Taylor Society (1915)
+ Society of Industrial Engineers (1917)
(1930s)
Society for the Advancement of Management
History 398
Fall 2004
Taylor’s Legacy
• scientific claims untenable; time-motion studies
infamous
• “solutions of enduring significance (Aitken)
– planned routing and scheduling of work in progress
==> assembly line and continuous flow production
– systematic inspection procedures between operations
– printed job and instruction cards
– refined cost-accounting techniques
– systematization of store procedures, purchasing and
inventory control
History 398
Fall 2004
Project KickStart
Experience in
Software, Inc.
www.kickstart.com
History 398
Fall 2004
History 398
Fall 2004
Ford vs. Taylor
• Both men are products of C19 machine-shop;
whatever they do is determined by that basic
experience.
• Making vs. manufacturing
• Thus Taylor concerned with "scientific selection" of
workman and his "scientific training"; Ford can use
unskilled labor and train most of it within one day.
• Both instinctively sense that information is essential
to their undertaking, but neither quite appreciates
that it constitutes new area of expertise.
• Attitudes toward workers: 60% limit vs. $5 day
History 398
Fall 2004