Taylorism: Working with a Stopwatch

by Ron Avery

At least one American scholar has listed the most important thinkers in creating the 20th century world as Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud and Philadelphian Frederick W. Taylor.

OK, just about everyone knows Darwin, the father of evolution and Freud, the father of psychiatry, but who the heck is Taylor?

The mostly forgotten Taylor is also a 'father." He's the father of "scientific management" and the "time-motion study." His theories profoundly effected every industrial worker in the first half of the 20th century and continues to influence the way we think about work, productivity and efficiency.

Taylor was an original thinker with a prickly off-beat personality. He had a life-long passion for improving just about anything and seemed to make a religion out of efficiency. As a young man, he invented an "improved" spoon-shaped tennis racquet. "Even a game of croquet was a course of study and careful analysis with Fred," recalled a childhood friend. The youth liked long hikes and "was always experimenting with his legs" to determine the most efficient method of walking.

Psychoanalyzing Taylor, one writer says he displayed "classic obsessive-compulsive traits". He was a man who "set exceptionally high and rigid standards for himself and everyone around him and who reacted strongly to any failure to measure up to these standards." But he was also touched by genius.

Taylor was born in 1856 in Philadelphia and died there in 1915. His father was a wealthy lawyer providing young Taylor the means to travel in Europe. He attended exclusive Phillips Exeter Academy, where he ranked first in his class.

Taylor was expected to enroll in Harvard University, but his life took an unexpected and unexplained twist. Instead of going off to Harvard, Taylor decided to take a job as an apprentice machinist in a Philadelphia plant that made pumps. The odd move might have been a rebellion against a controlling father.

For four years, Taylor spent days as a lowly industrial apprentice while by night, he enjoyed the entertainment and private club membership of other, proper upper-crust Philadelphians.

At the end of the apprenticeship, he took a job at Philadelphia's Midvale Steel Company. It was here that he watched his fellow workers at their tasks and began formulating his philosophy of scientific management.

Some say the essence of his philosophy, which became known as "Taylorism," was turning workers into machines. His time-motion studies gauged how fast a job could be reasonable done in the most efficient manner. Time-wasting practices had to be eliminated. With workers operating like a well-oiled machine, production would soar, profit would increase and workers' salaries would rise.

During his six years at Midvale, Taylor rose to foreman, master mechanic and chief works engineer. He was sure that his fellow machinists could easily double and triple their daily output and eventually he proved it.

He also recognized that part of the problem was not having the right tools or necessary material at the times they were needed. He also felt that every task should be meticulously planned in advance.

One of Taylor's interesting experiments was a minute study of shovels - determining the right shovel design for each job. He determined the proper way to shovel and how much material should be lifted with each shovel load. Incidentally, Taylor concluded the proper shovel-load - no matter what the material - was exactly 21 ½ pounds - no less and no more.

Taylor's studies led to reduction of shovel workers at Bethlehem Steel from 500 laborers to 140 men over a three-year period. The shovel men got a 60 percent wage increase, and the company saved 50 percent on labor costs.

Taylor's most famous experiment involved laborers who manually loaded pig iron on railcars at Bethlehem.. His studies showed that during a 10-hour day each man was loading 12 ½ tons of iron. He used a particularly strong worker to prove that a man could load 47 tons. He then offered a 62 percent wage increase to any man who could achieve the 47 tons.

To Taylor it was all very scientific . He calculated that men loading pigs weighing 42 pounds could work 58 percent of the day and would have to rest 42 percent of the day to achieve maximum productivity.

Taylor became a consultant for other companies and wrote two influential books on his theories. At first, there was resistance to his theories and time-motion studies by both management and labor.

Eventually, manufacturers grew to love Taylorim while labor unions found it all inhuman. He was accused of turning workers into robots. In 1912, he was called to testify before a Congressional committee that included heated, emotional debates with union representatives. Taylor remains a controversial figure today among labor historians. "Taylorism" is now used mostly as a negative term. Still many of his ideas have become standard practice in factories and offices around the world.