SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT

According to Frederick Winslow Taylor in 1911, Scientific management is improving labor productivity by scientifically analyzing and establishing optimal workflow processes.

WHAT IS SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT? DESCRIPTION
At the end of 19th century Frederick Winslow Taylor deviced the Scientific Management approach to improve labour productivity by analyzing and establishing workflow processes. Taylor thought the "One Best Way" to perform a task could be found by analyzing work in scientific manner.
Taylor had a pragmatic and even good motives to free up the good worker (Schmidt) of one half of his work, who was carrying pig iron at Bethlehem steel and at the same time he wanted to alleviate poverty and eliminate waste of time, energy and human ability but his method were very hard and sometimes had the opposite effect when they fell into the hands of ruthless exploiters of workers and this is why Scientific Management is often referred to disparagingly as Taylorism.

FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR - FATHER OF SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT. BIOGRAPHY
Frederick Winslow Taylor was born to a wealthy Quaker family in Philadelphia in 1856. He join Enterprise Hydraulics Works in 1874 as an apprentice patternmaker and machinist gainning shop-floor expertise. In 1878 he took up an unskilled job at Midvale Steel Works where he does his first experiments. He gains a master degree in mechanical engineering in 1881, he was appointed as general manager of manufacturing investment company (MIC) in 1890. During the life of Taylor the circumstances were quite different, there had been a series of depressions and production methods at the time were very inefficient and also there was a need to employ many immigrants into the US so that the living standard can be raised and also the rising demand of every sort of goods can be met. All these influences Taylor to publish The Principle of Scientific Management in 1911. He dies in 1915.

USAGE OF SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT. APPLICATIONS

• It serves as inspiration for many later management philosophies, this include Operation Research, Management by Objectives, Just-in time, Lean manufacturing, Total Quality Management, six sigma and Business Process Reengineering.
• Old-fashioned,inefficient industrial environments.
• As a contrast to modern business or management methods.
• Taylor was a strong advocate of Learning-by-Doing. Contrary to today theorizing, hypothesis formation and testing, the One Best Way came from the workers, not from the managers or owners(Spender and Kijne, 1996). According to Peter Drucker, Taylor was the creator of knowledge management because the aim of scientific management is to produce knowledge about how to improve work processes.

STEPS IN SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT. PROCESS - IT CONSIST FOUR PRINCIPLES

1. Select, train, teach and develop the most suitable person for the job, again scientifically, rather than passively leaving them to train themselves.
2. Managers must provide detail instructions and supervision to each worker to ensure the job is done in a scientific way.
3. Replace rule of thumb work methods with methods based on scientific study of the task.
4. Divide work between managers and workers. The managers apply scientific management principles to planning and supervising the work, and the workers carry out the tasks.

STRENGHT OF SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT. BENEFIT.

•  Focus on the individual task and worker level.
• Contribution to efficient production methods, leading to a major global increase of living standard.
• Direct reward mechanism rather than pointless end-of-year profit sharing scheme.
• One of the first formal division between workers and managers.
• Emphasis on measuring. Measurement enables improvement.
• Systematic. Early proponent of quality standards.

LIMITATINS OF SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT. DISADVANTAGES

• Overemphasis on measuring. No attention for soft factors.
• Not useful to deal with groups or teams.
• Taylorism can easily be abused to exploit human beings. Conflict with labour unions.
• Separation of planning function and doing.
• Mechanistic. Treating people as machine.
• Leaves no room for individual preferences or initiative.

Book: Taylor, Frederick Winslow - The principle of Scientific Management, 1911
Book: Spender, J.C and Kijne, H. (Eds) - Scientific Management: Frederick Winslow Taylor`s Gift to the world? 1996