Scientific Management
This all changed with the introduction of scientific management at the beginning of the twentieth century. Although we could claim that operations management has existed since the dawn of civilization scientific management was probably the first historical landmark in the field in that it represented for the first time a systematic approach to manufacturing. This concept was developed by Frederick W. Taylor. an imaginative engineer and insightful observer of organizational activities. The essence of Taylor's philosophy was that scientific laws govern how much a worker can produce per day and that it is the function of management to discover and use these laws in its production systems and that it is the function of the worker to carry out management's wishes without question Taylor's philosophy was not greet approval by his contemporaries. On the contrary some unions resented or feared scientific management-and with some justification. In too many instances managers of the day were quick to embrace the mechanisms of Taylor's philosophy-time study incentive plans and forth-but ignored their responsibility to organize and standardize the we done For many firms workers often were viewed as jut another interchangeable asset like plant and equipment. Taylor's ideas were widely accepted in contemporary Japan and a Japanese translations of Taylor's book Principles of Scientific Management which Wallenstein Japan as The Secret of Saving Lost Motion sold more than two million copies To this day there i a tron z legacy of Taylorism in Japanese approaches to many management.
Notable co-workers of Taylor were Frank and Lillian Gilbert motion study industrial psychology and Henry Gantlet scheduling wage payment plans However it is probably not well known that Taylor a devout Quaker requested cussing lessons from an earthy foreman to help him communicate with workers that Frank Gilbert defeated younger champion bricklayers in bricklaying contests by using his own principles of motion economy or that Gantlet won a presidential citation for his application of the Gantlet chart to shipbuilding during World War.
