Frederick Taylor (1856-1915)

After abandoning his law studies, in which he is said to have excelled, Frederick TAYLOR, bom into the upper middle classes of Philadelphia, was taken on as a mechanic's apprentice at Midvale Steel Works (1875). Once appointed foreman, he struggled to increase production output and engaged in an open war to achieve this. He recommended a system of fines and got blacklegs hired (workers who acted against the interests of the labour collective), lie fought against "systematic time-wasting", an expression he used to refer to the collective behaviour of workers that consisted in limiting effort in order to maintain an acceptable rate of pay for piece work. Promoted to engineer in 1883, then "consulting engineer" at the age of 37 (1893), his work and experience at the Bethlehem Steel Works in Pittsburgh covered just as much engineering as it did accounts management. He was convinced that workers could considerably improve their productivity (by a factor of 3 or 4) if they had the right methods. He began to lobby in favour of the idea of scientific management, or scientific organisation of labour. He published Shop management in 1903, Workmen and their management in 1909, then a summary of his experience rationalising factory labour in a book entitled Principles of Scientific Management, in 1911. Having built up a fortune from the hundred or so patents he had filed, he retired at the age of 45 to devote his time to the rationalisation of the art of golf and ornamental gardening.

Before Taylor

Taylor developed his analyses and recommendations in a world of industrial production where power belonged to the foremen. At that time, foremen exerted a decentralised authority in order to regulate production operations. It was they that defined the way workers worked, the schedules, the methods and the tools. It was also the foremen who were in charge of recruiting, training, controlling and motivating workers. It was as if they were sub-entrepreneurs within the company, making their own deals, negotiating wages, working methods and labour organisation with the workers. As for the work itself, this was above all the result of skilled labourers who enjoyed a certain amount of autonomy. These workers had the know-how that companies depended on. This know-how represented both a limit and an obstacle to employer control of labour. Part of that labour escaped them. The challenge for entrepreneurs was therefore to control zvorker productivity. Given the pressure exerted on them by their employers, workers developed a strategy for systematically putting the brakes on production rates. Such was the industrial context into which Taylor ventured.

Furthermore, industry had already begun to focus on rationalising production activities for some years. This involved substantial technological changes and instrumentation of industrial labour. Large machines were developed: blast furnaces, rolling inills, tamping machines and presses. Tools were mechanised and machine tools began to be driven by powerful engines. Since the invention of the steam engine, the hydro-electric turbine and then the internal combustion engine, everything was engine-driven. Industrial production became mass production, as it adopted approaches to standardise parts belonging to military arsenals. As for steel, its metallurgical qualities were clearly improved.

The rationalisation movement, already two centuries old, saw the emergence and spread of engineering schools. Engineers did not limit

their efforts to technological rationalisation, but extended them to the way work was organised. They wanted to help control the complex nature of industrial activity by ordering and integrating operations in the best possible manner. Industrial process control became a central issue, especially in the process industry, followed by the mass production industry. But as well as looking at industrial production activities, the rationalisation movement pursued its drive further giving rise, for example, to the first embryos of cost accounting, invented in railway organisations. Production planning and scheduling questions and methods started to develop, notably in an effort to counter and control the power wielded by foremen. On the other hand, the control of working methods and operating times remained within the hands of skilled workers.

The challenge of industrialisation at the turn of the 19^th and 20' centuries was definitely centred on controlling labour productivity. There were increasing attacks on the brakes applied by workers. Since 3880, machine tools offered greater precision than hand-held tools for a similar cost. However, workers still had control of machine operating rates. Productivity therefore depended on the willingness of workers. Such dependence was apparently unbearable for engineers, and notably for young Taylor. The solution advocated in companies in order to dominate workers was to set up a payment system based on piecework.

Taylor's research

Eager to further industrial rationalisation, Taylor first embarked on research into metal machining. He defined optimal shapes for cutting tools and defined the ratios between cutting speed and depth. He studied ways to cool down the cutting machines, introduced automatic sharpening systems and focused especially on machine setting tables.

He also studied operating times during the work process. He developed a method for measuring operating times, based in particular on analysis sheets. He analysed the work and studied movements. He also studied the effects of muscular fatigue and of the pay scheme (differential rate for piecework). His analysis of the inefficiency of the production system can be summarised in the following cause-related flow diagram[28]:

Fig. 4. Taylor's analysis of inefficiency

Based on these analyses, Taylor drew up a series of recommendations in view of a different labour organisation. He proceeded to examine the conditions in which tasks were carried out, defined a detailed breakdown of tasks, sought the best way to perform them, defined the best working methods, timed the basic times required for each task and obliged operators to perform tasks in the same way. The labour organisation system that he put forward can be shown by the following diagram:

Fig. 5. Labour organisation system recommended by Taylor

Taylorian rationalisation therefore consisted in replacing the in-house contracting system between foremen and skilled workers with a scientific analysis of times. The key organisational principles are as follows:

- Transfer all responsibility for the design and organisation of labour to the manager. The manager must analyse, design and plan the work. Workers must only be allowed to perform the task defined by the manager. This reflects the principle of separation between the design and the performance of work.

- Use scientific methods to determine the most efficient way (the one best way) to carry our work. This involves analysing the workstation, along with the movements and times required to perform each task. It means performing an analytical breakdown of what is involved and then reconstructing each step in order to define the best method for performing each task.

- Select the most suitable individuals for performing the tasks defined by the production engineering specialists. The individual's qualifications must match the requirements of the task.

- Train individuals to use the best working methods defined by the production engineering specialists. Training consists in workers building up their skills and dexterity.

- Monitor each worker to check s/he is using the right methods and to ensure that results and performance levels are in line with expectations.

- Pay workers for the task performed.

Taylor's principles therefore aimed to rationalise and optimise work and the way it was organised. They are based on the reasoning that the engineer uses in order to optimise a machine and apply that same reasoning to the organisation of labour. They combine this reasoning with an obsession to control workers so that they apply the optimum technical methods defined by the production engineering specialists. This obsession for control partly explains why taylorism was adopted in the Soviet Union; given the country's political system, the benefit obtained did not justify the implementation of Taylor's methods and taylorism was instead applied as a tool for controlling the workers. Several analysts, in Europe, were also to conclude that taylorism would, in the long run, end up as a tool for dominating the workers rather than a means of improving industrial performance.

Taylorism can be seen as an extended form of bureaucratic rationalisation and as the setting up of a centralised manufacturing knowledge management system. The creation of production engineering offices led to developments in work analysis and design, the work to be performed was formalised, while at the same time labour was de-qualified, the division of labour was reinforced and the positions held within a company became specialised: design, production engineering, marketing, planning, pay, etc. Taylor's scientific organisation of labour was based on an implicit hypothesis according to which it is possible to define tasks independently of their performance. This could be seen in the separation of design from the actual performance of work, but also in the separation between innovation and routine. This hypothesis also assumes that work situations can be totally planned ahead. Taylor's analytical ideal, reflected in the approach to break down and then

reconstruct work, also ties in with hypotheses according to which the work process can be sequentially analysed; it involves an accumulation of effects and times (sequence). This leads to the idea that each task, however it is performed or managed, can and must be defined in an independent and specialised manner. Management was in this sense functional. Furthermore, Taylor considered that increasing a company's maximum prosperity is beneficial for both the employer and the employee, who are considered as interdependent. For him, it was a question of putting the production system first, and not the workers and their skills as in the past.

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 795