History 398 Fall 2004 History 398Lecture 16 TAYLOR AND FORD: CONTRASTS AND CONNECTIONS “It’s high-speed steel and the Ford car that’s destroyed the machinists’

History 398 Fall 2004

History 398 Lecture 16

TAYLOR AND FORD: CONTRASTS AND

CONNECTIONS

“It’s high-speed steel and the Ford car that’s destroyed the machinists’ union …”


Flow of Production and Flow of Information

Unfortunately, the folk wisdom that surrounds Henry Ford’s life and work has precluded any serious scholarship on the day-to-day operations of the Ford Motor Company. But the fact is that the company kept impressive records and controlled and manipulated information far more creatively than any other company dealt with in this study.

David Hounshell, From American System...

Production Floworganization of work


H.L. Arnold & F.L. Faurote, Ford Methods and the Ford Shops (1915)



Flow of Production and Flow of Information

• Arnold's & Faurote's emphasis on the need for information

• Who Arnold and Faurote were• Taylorism and Fordism, the two

hallmarks of modern production



F.W. Taylor and Scientific

Management• Management studies and reform in

late 19th century• Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-

1915)

Except in matters of degree (e.g., the operations researchers tend to use rather high-powered mathematics), it is not clear that operations research embodies any philosophy different from that of scientific management. Charles Babbage and Frederick Taylor will have to be made, retroactively, charter members of the operations research societies.

Herbert Simon, The New Science of Management Decision (1960)


1874-78 apprenticeship at Ferrell & Jones1878-90 Midvale Steel, apprentice -> Chief Engineer (1884)

1883 Mech. E. Stevens Institute1890-93 General Manager, Mfg. Investment Company1893-1901 Independent Consulting

1898 Bethlehem Steel, with Henry L. Gantt, Carl G. Barth1901 begins to speak publicly about “task management”

1903 “Shop Management” (Trans. ASME 24)1909-14 Harvard Business School, consulting with

Army and Navy

1910 Eastern Rates Case, Louis Brandeis 1911 Watertown Arsenal

1911-12 Congressional hearings


Scientific ManagementScientific management is not any efficiency device. ... It is not a new system of figuring costs; it is not a new system of paying men ... it is not holding a stop watch on a man and writing things down about him ... it is not motion study nor an analysis of the movements of men. ... It is not divided foremanship ... it is not any of the devices which the average man calls to mind when scientific management is spoken of. ... In this sense, scientific management involves a complete mental revolution on the part of the workingman [and an ... equally complete revolution on the part of those on management's side. ... And without this complete mental revolution on both sides scientific management does not exist.. [F.W. Taylor before House committee, 1912, quoted by Daniel Nelson, A Mental Revolution, frontispiece and p. 5]


Principles of Scientific Management (1911)

• a solution of the "labor problem"• "soldiering"• "four great underlying principles"

– development of true science - the "one best way"


"One Best Way"Now, among the various methods and implements used in each element of each trade there is always one method and one implement which is quicker and better than any of the rest. And this one best method and best implement can only be discovered or developed through a scientific study and analysis of all of the methods and implements in use, together with accurate, minute motion and time study. This involves the gradual substitution of science for rule of thumb throughout the mechanic arts. (p.25)



"One Best Way"

Taylor and his immediate disciples were engineers [who] ... accepted without question the engineering approach that had already proved itself in the design of physical objects, and they extended it to the analysis and control of the activities of people. The essential core of scientific management, regarded as a philosophy, was the idea that human activity could be measured, analyzed, and controlled by techniques analogous to those that had proved successful when applied to physical objects. (Aitken, Taylorism at Watertown Arsenal, 15-16)


Frank Gilbrethtime and

motion studies




– development of true science - the "one best way"– scientific selection of the workman

– scientific education and development of worker

– intimate, friendly relations with workers based on management's sharing task of productivity


Division of Responsibility

This writer asserts as a general principle ... that in almost all of the mechanic arts the science which underlies each act of each workman is so great and amounts to so much that the workman who is best suited to actually doing the work is incapable of fully understanding this science, without the guidance and help of those who are working with him or over him, either through lack of education or through insufficient mental capacity. In order that the work may be done in accordance with scientific laws, it is necessary that there shall be a far more equal division of the responsibility between the management and the workmen than exists under any of the ordinary types of management. (25-26)


Cooperation between management and worker

... to work according to scientific laws, the management must take over and perform much of the work which is now left to the men; almost every act of the workman should be preceded by one or more preparatory acts of the management which enable him to do his work better and quicker than he otherwise could. ... This close, intimate, personal cooperation between the management and the men is of the essence of modern scientific or task management.




– development of true science - the "one best way"

– scientific selection of the workman– scientific education and development of worker– intimate, friendly relations with workers based

on management's sharing task of productivity• not mentioned as principles but centrally

important: "differential piece rate", "functional foremanship"



F.W. Taylor and Scientific Management

• Management studies and reform in late 19th century

• Taylor (1856-1915)• Taylor's Legacy


1911 (Gilbreth) Society for the Promotion of the Science of Management

Taylor Society (1915)

+ Society of Industrial Engineers (1917)

Society for the Advancement of Management

(1930s)


Taylor’s Legacy

• scientific claims untenable; time-motion studies infamous

• “solutions of enduring significance (Aitken)– planned routing and scheduling of work in

progress ==> assembly line and continuous flow production

– systematic inspection procedures between operations

– printed job and instruction cards– refined cost-accounting techniques– systematization of store procedures, purchasing

and inventory control


Project KickStartExperience in Software, Inc. www.kickstart.com



Ford vs. Taylor• Both men are products of C19 machine-shop;

whatever they do is determined by that basic experience.

• Making vs. manufacturing• Thus Taylor concerned with "scientific selection"

of workman and his "scientific training"; Ford can use unskilled labor and train most of it within one day.

• Both instinctively sense that information is essential to their undertaking, but neither quite appreciates that it constitutes new area of expertise.

• Attitudes toward workers: 60% limit vs. $5 day

Documents

History 398 Fall 2004 History 398Lecture 16 TAYLOR AND FORD: CONTRASTS AND CONNECTIONS “It’s high-speed steel and the Ford car that’s destroyed the machinists’