Frederick Taylor is rightfully considered the "father" of the modern system of rational work organization. He also stood at the origins of management at enterprises. The revolutionary innovations proposed by the American engineer were initially met with hostility. But the experience of the Ford car factories has convincingly shown what tempting prospects "Taylorism" brings.
Facts from the biography of Frederick Taylor
The future engineer, who did a lot to create a scientific, rational organization of labor, was born on March 21, 1856 in Pennsylvania (United States). Frederick's father had a law practice. Frederick himself was educated in Europe - first in France, then in Germany. Later, Taylor studied at Harvard Law School, but his vision problems prevented him from continuing his studies.
After 1874, Taylor began to master blue-collar jobs. He started out as a press service worker at a factory in Philadelphia. An economic depression soon began in the United States, and therefore Taylor had to be content with a job as an ordinary handyman at a steel mill.
In the years that followed, Frederick grew up to be the head of the workshops. At the same time, he received training at the Institute of Technology, receiving the degree of a qualified mechanical engineer.
In 1884, Taylor, who took the position of chief engineer, tried a new wage system that took into account labor productivity.
Engineer and innovator
In the 90s, Taylor, by then running an investment company in Philadelphia, set up his business in an area called management consulting. A decade and a half later, Frederick founded the Society for the Promotion of Management, combining engineering with the science of production management.
During those years, Taylor conducted research work in the field of innovative work organization. Frederick protected about a hundred inventive ideas with patents.
What did Frederick Winslow Taylor do? The engineer decomposed the work of the worker into elementary operations and determined, with a stopwatch in his hands, extremely strict regulations for their implementation. From the labor process, unnecessary movements were consistently excluded, on which a significant part of the time was spent in total. Another innovation was the special training of workers.
Taylor's system was at that time very revolutionary and made a significant contribution to the science of manufacturing. Frederick argued: any work can be analyzed, systematized, decomposed into simple elements and transferred during training to any employee, even if he does not have the initial skills. This is how Taylor laid the foundations for the current vocational education system.
In practice, the famous Henry Ford applied the system of rationalizing production of Taylor with considerable success. As a result, his factories began to produce better quality products with the least cost of resources.
Under a hail of criticism
Not everything in the career of an American engineer went smoothly. Taylor's pioneering work has come under heavy criticism from time to time. Taylor and his system were opposed by union leaders who literally hounded the innovator.
Taylor's ideas ran counter to the aspirations and interests of union bosses, who closely guarded their trade secrets. Union leaders even pushed for a tough bill passed by Congress to prohibit job research in state-owned enterprises. Such bans were in effect at shipbuilding and military factories until the end of the imperialist war.
The capitalists also criticized the Taylor system. And this is not surprising, since the engineer insisted that most of the income that his scientific method gave should be transferred to the workers. The business owners, however, had a different opinion.
Taylor also overhauled the industrial production management system. He convinced the capitalists: not business owners should manage factories, but specially trained managers. For all of his innovative views, Taylor was awarded the title of "troublemaker" and was even accused of adherence to socialism.
However, Taylor also got a portion of criticism from representatives of scientific socialism. Vladimir Ulyanov-Lenin considered the system of labor rationalization invented by Taylor as a "scientific system of wringing out sweat" from workers, which enslaved man. But the leader of the Russian revolution also recommended highlighting the most rational moments in F. Taylor's system in order to apply them to improve production in a more humane socialist economy.
Taylor completed his earthly journey on March 21, 1915. Cause of death was pneumonia.
