Scientific management and Frederick Taylor
In 1911, Frederick Winslow Taylor published his book, the principles of scientific management, in which he describes how the application of the scientific method in the management of workers could significantly improve productivity. Methods of scientific management called in order to optimize the way that the tasks have been completed and simplifying the job enough so that workers could be trained to perform their specialized sequence of movements in a "better".
Before the scientific management, work conducted by trained craftsmen who had learnt their jobs in long internships. They made their own decisions about how their work was to be performed. Scientific management has removed a lot of this autonomy and trades converted a series of simplified jobs that could be performed by unskilled workers who could easily be trained for tasks.
Taylor looked to improve the productivity of the workers at the beginning of his career, when he observed gross inefficiencies during his contacts with steel workers.
Military life
Working in the steel industry, Taylor had observed the phenomenon of workers deliberately operating well below their capacity, that is, as soldiers. He attributed as soldiers to three causes:
1.
1.
The almost universally widespread belief among workers that if they became more productive, less of them would be required and jobs would be eliminated.
2.
Pay non-encouragement systems encourage low productivity if the employee receives the same pay regardless of the quantity produced, assuming that the employee can convince the employer that the slowness is really a good pace for the work. Employees take great care never to work at a good pace for fear that this rate would become the new standard. If employees are paid by the amount they produce, they fear that management will decrease their unitary salary if the amount increases.
3.
Workers lose much of their effort in relying on the rule of thumb, rather than on methods the optimal working methods which may be determined by a scientific study of the task.
At the counter as soldiers and to improve efficiency, Taylor began to conduct experiments to determine the best level of performance for certain jobs, and what was necessary to achieve this performance.
Time studies
Taylor has been argued that even the tasks the most basic blind could be considered in a way that could significantly increase the productivity and the scientific direction of the work was more effective than the method 'initiative and motivation' the motivation of workers. The initiative and incentive method offered an incentive to increase productivity but placed responsibility for the worker to find a way to do so.
To scientifically determine the best way to perform a job, Taylor carried out experiments which he called time studies, (also known as time and motion). These studies were characterized by the use of a stopwatch time sequence of the worker's movement, with the aim of determining the best a way to perform a job.
Here are examples of some of these studies of time and movements that were made by Taylor and others in the era of scientific management.
Pig iron
If workers are moving to 12 1/2 tons of pig iron per day, and they might be encouraged to try to advance the 47 1/2 tons per day, left to their own intelligence, they would probably run out after a few hours and are unable to achieve their goal. However, by the first experiments to determine the amount of rest that was necessary, the worker Manager could determine the optimum timing of lifting and rest so that the worker can move tons of 47 1/2 a day without getting tired.
Not all workers have been physically able to move 47 1/2 tons per day; perhaps only 1/8 of pig iron managers have been able to do. While these 1/8 were not extraordinary people who have been prized by the company, their physical abilities were well suited to the motives of pig iron. This example suggests that workers should be selected depending on how they are suitable for a particular job.
The Science of shovel
In another study of the 'science of shoveling', Taylor ran the time of studies to determine that the optimal weight that a worker must raise in a shovel was 21 pounds.
0 comments:
Post a Comment