In the last issue, StitchWorld took the initiative to encourage the industry to celebrate Sewing Machine Day on 10th September. Taking further its tribute to the great contributors of the Apparel Industry, in this issue the magazine shifts its focus to the ‘Brain’ behind the concept of Methods Time Management (MTM), Frederick Winslow Taylor. F.W. Taylor was an American mechanical engineer who, through a series of studies, sought to improve industrial efficiency. His efforts had such an impact on the business world of today that he has been named the ‘Father’ of Scientific Management. He was one of the intellectual leaders of the Efficiency Movement and his ideas, broadly conceived, were highly influential in the Progressive Era.
Frederick Winslow Taylor was born on March 20, 1865. At the age of 25, Taylor earned an engineering degree from the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. However, he chose to work as a machinist and pattern maker in Philadelphia at the Enterprise Hydraulic Works. After this experience, Taylor worked at the Midvale Steel Company where he started as shop clerk and, within six years, he became the Chief Engineer. While working there he introduced the concept of piece work in the factory. His goal was to find the most efficient way to perform specific tasks. Taylor closely watched how work was done on the production floor and would then measure the quantity produced.
The environment at the time was most conducive for the work Taylor had taken upon himself. There was much industrial change happening after the Civil War. National industries grew out of local trades – steel, glass, textiles and shoes, and what were small factories became large plants. Mass production took centre-stage, while workers received little for their efforts. Problems included safety, carelessness, inefficiencies and worker foot dragging on the job. Taylor sought to get past the futile incentive bonus system. He believed that incentive wages were not a solution unless combined with efficient tasks that were carefully planned and easily learned. He believed that the secret of productivity was finding the right challenge for each person, and then paying him well for increased output.
At Midvale, Taylor used time studies to set daily production quotas. Incentives were paid to those reaching their daily goal; for those who didn’t, thet got the differential rate, a much lower pay. Taylor doubled productivity using time study, systematic controls and tools, functional foremanship, and his new wage scheme. He paid the person not the job.
At the age of 37, Taylor became a Consulting Engineer. His most important client was Bethlehem Iron Company. He with a colleague, made Bethlehem “the world’s most modern factory and potentially a prototype for manufacturers and engineers in other industries” by installing production planning, differential piece rates, and functional foremanship. Among Taylor’s other contributions to Bethlehem in 1901, were a real time analysis of daily output and costs, a modern cost accounting system, reduced yard worker’s ranks from 500 to 140.
While at Bethlehem, Taylor and Manusel White co-developed the Taylor-White system for heat treating chrome-tungsten tool steel, which won him international recognition. Despite his many impressive achievements, Taylor was eventually fired in May 1901 due to disputes with new management at Bethlehem. Taylor wrote a book, The Principles of Scientific Management, from transcripts of talks he gave after he stopped working for money. The system he describes in his book is an actual composite of everything he had learned from trying different things at many companies. Taylor did what he could to fit as much of his thinking to his client’s problems and motives for each particular situation. He was the first person in history to make a systematic attempt to improve both output and work life in factories.
Taylor’s core values were: the rule of reason, improved quality, lower costs, higher wages, higher output, labour-management cooperation, experimentation, clear tasks and goals, feedback, training, mutual help and support, stress reduction, and the careful selection and development of people. He was the first to present a systematic study of interactions among job requirements, tools, methods, and human skill, to fit people to jobs both psychologically and physically, and to let data and facts do the talking rather than prejudice, opinions, or egomania.
After undertaking several studies, Taylor developed a series of theories which became widely known as “Taylorism”. These theories were popularised during World War I as business people began to pay more attention to personnel selection, work methods, work standards, and motivation. Taylor consolidated his expertise on defining the capabilities and limitations of human labour. With this information, contemporary managers are more easily able to amplify productivity by correctly marching employees to tasks, improving work methods, and defining work standards.
While Taylorism promoted benefits of time study, Therbligs (by Gilbreths) advocated laboratory approaches towards defining motions and methods. While the time study group see nothing practical in laboratory approach whereas the motion study group considered the study unscientific and crude. However, eventually both were combined to methods engineering.