FW Taylor’s Scientific Management

20/12/2020 1 By indiafreenotes

Frederic Winslow Taylor started his career as a mechanist in 1875. He studied engineering in an evening college and rose to the position of chief engineer in his organization. He invented high-speed steel cutting tools and spent most of his life as a consulting engineer.

What Frederick Winslow Taylor calls scientific management is typically a management philosophy pioneered and practiced by him (and his followers) according to his own ideology; and is something like ‘India of My Dreams’ as envisaged by Gandhiji. Accordingly, Taylor’s Scientific Management is popularly called as ‘Taylorism’.

Introduction to Taylor and His Work:

F.W. Taylor (1856-1915) was an American, who joined Midvale Steelworks, Philadelphia (U.S.A.) as a machinist; and gradually rose to the position of the Chief Engineer-through hard work and progress. F.W. Taylor conducted his experiments in three companies viz., Midvale Steel Works, Simonds Rolling Machine and Bethlehem Steel Works.

Taylor’s Scientific Managements was, in fact, a movement known as the ‘Scientific Management Movement’ pioneered by Taylor and carried on by his followers. The important publications of Taylor are all combined into one book titled ‘Scientific Management’.

Taylor’s Main Observation:

Throughout his life career, Taylor had observed that there was excessive inefficiency in the management and functioning of industrial enterprises. In fact, the primary blame for the inefficient functioning of industrial enterprises was put by Taylor on management; for it was management who did not know what constituted a fair day’s task and also the ‘best way’ of doing the same.

Therefore, he came out with his new concept of management, called scientific management.

Scientific management might be defined as follows:

Scientific management involves the application of a scientific approach to managerial decision­ making (consisting of-collection of data, an analysis of data and basing decisions on the outcome of such analyses); and discarding at the same time, all unscientific approaches, like rule of the thumb, a hit or miss approach and a trial-and-error approach.

F W. Taylor defined scientific management in the following words:

“Scientific Management consists in knowing what you (i.e. management) want men to do exactly; and seeing to it that they do it in the best and the cheapest manner.”

Principles of Scientific Management:

The fundamental principles, which would support the concept and practice of scientific management, are the following:

(i) Science, not the rule of the thumb.

(ii) Harmony, not discord.

(iii) Co-operation, not individualism.

(iv) Maximum production, in place of restricted production.

(v) Development of each person to the greatest of his capabilities.

(vi) A more equal division of responsibility between management and workers.

(vii) Mental revolution on the part of management and workers.

The fundamental principles that Taylor saw underlying the scientific approach to management may be summarized as follows:

  1. Replace rule-of-thumb work methods with methods based on a scientific study of the tasks.
  2. Scientifically select, train, and develop each worker rather than passively leaving them to train themselves.
  3. Cooperate with the workers to ensure that the scientifically developed methods are being followed.
  4. Divide work nearly equally between managers and workers, so that the managers apply scientific management principles to planning the work, and the workers actually perform the tasks.

Taylor concentrated more on productivity and productivity based wages. He stressed on time and motion study and other techniques for measuring work. Apart from this, in Taylor’s work, there also runs a strongly humanistic theme. He had an idealist’s notion that the interests of workers, managers, and owners should be harmonized.

In the scheme of functional foremanship recommended by Taylor, there is a provision for eight foremen of the following types:

(i) Route Clerk:

The route clerk is a foreman who would lay down the route (or journey) of raw materials from the raw-material stage to the finished product stage as passing through different processes and machines.

(ii) Instructions Card Clerk:

The instructions card clerk is a foreman who would determine the detailed instructions for handling a job; and prepare a card containing such instructions.

(iii) Time and Cost-Clerk:

The time and cost clerk is a foreman who would record the time taken by a worker in completing a job; and would also compile the cost of doing that job.

(iv) Shop Disciplinarian:

The shop disciplinarian would look after the maintenance of discipline in the workshop and deal with cases of absenteeism, misbehavior and other aspects of indiscipline.

(v) Gang Boss:

The gang boss is the supervisor proper. He would see to it that all work-facilities are made available to workers and they start their work as per the instructions imparted to them.

(vi) Speed Boss:

The speed boss is a foreman who would determine the optimum speed at which machines are to be operated; so that both-over speeding and under-speeding of machines are avoided. In this way, less depreciation is caused to machines; industrial accidents are averted and quality of production is also maintained.

(vii) Repair Boss:

The repair boss is a foreman, who would look after and take care of the repairs and maintenance of machines.

(viii) Inspector:

The inspector is a foreman who would look after the quality of production.

An Outline Structure of Taylor’s Scientific Management:

Though Taylor’s work and practice of it is quite comprehensive and detailed; yet the major aspects of work done by him could be summarized into the following outline structure:

(1) Determination of a fair day’s task for each worker through scientific methods (including the best way of doing a job).

(2) Scientific selection and training of workers.

(3) Standardisation of raw materials, tools and working conditions.

(4) Functional foremanship.

(5) Differential piece-rate system of wage-payment.

Following is a brief account of the above aspects of scientific management:

(1) Determination of fair day’s task for each worker through scientific methods (including the best way of doing a job). For determining a fair day’s task for each worker, Taylor recommended the use of scientific methods involving the conduct of the following three types of work studies, viz.,

(a) Time study

(b) Motion study

(c) Fatigue study

The following points are not worthy in this context:

(i) An average worker (or representative worker) is first selected for conducting the above work-studies. In case otherwise, the standards of work fixed would be either too high or too low.

(ii) The above three work-studies (i.e. time, motion and fatigue studies) are to be considered together to arrive at a fair day’s task.

(2) Scientific selection and training of workers:

This aspect of scientific management is, in fact, the staffing angle of it. The workers, under scientific management, must be properly selected by adhering to a carefully- designed selection procedure. Further, selected workers must be imparted training in best methods of performing a job.

(3) Standardisation of raw materials, tools and working conditions:

By standardisation, Taylor implies two varieties of standardisation:

(i) Raw materials, tools, machines and other facilities of work must be of a reasonably good quality; so that the quality of production is reasonable.

(ii) Another variety of standardization which Taylor refers to is uniformity in providing work-facilities and work conditions to all workers, doing a similar type of job.

(4) Functional Foremanship:

The scheme of functional foremanship recommended by Taylor is, in fact, an introduction of managerial specialisation at the shop-level. In Taylor’s view, instead of a single foreman performing all the aspects of the foremanship task, there must be a number of foremen-each concerned with only a particular aspect of foremanship.

Each foreman, being a specialist in performance of his role, is a functional foreman. Hence, the nomenclature of the scheme as ‘functional foremanship’.

In the context of the scheme of functional foremanship, Taylor compares workers with students in a school class-room; where a student is imparted teaching in a particular subject by a specialized teacher of that subject instead of a single teacher teaching all the subject to students.