The Principles of Scientific Management
Management — Taylor's 1911 case for studying work like a science: time studies, planned tasks, rest schedules and pay tied to output, from pig iron to bicycle-ball inspection.
Mechanisms
Workers slow down to keep the record secret
Taylor quotes his own earlier paper: the employer rarely forces a faster pace without "an actual record proving conclusively how fast the work can be done." So the crew's main interest is making sure no such record ever exists.
"The greater part of the systematic soldiering, however, is done by the men with the deliberate object of keeping their employers ignorant of how fast work can be done."
Why it matters
Taylor quotes his own earlier paper: the employer rarely forces a faster pace without "an actual record proving conclusively how fast the work can be done." So the crew's main interest is making sure no such record ever exists.
Use when: Your team's estimates never get shorter no matter how familiar the work becomes.
Cut the rate twice and you've trained them to hold back
Each rate cut punished the extra output that triggered it.
"…after a workman has had the price per piece of the work he is doing lowered two or three times as a result of his having worked harder and increased his output, he is likely entirely to lose sight of his employer's side of the case…"
Why it matters
Each rate cut punished the extra output that triggered it. Taylor says the result is a "grim determination to have no more cuts" and suspicion of any proposal, however reasonable.
Use when: You are tempted to raise a quota because someone beat it.
Replace the one foreman with eight specialists
Taylor splits the foreman's job by function: one teacher for drawings and quality, others for speeds, motions and timing, each acting for the planning department.
"Under functional management, the old-fashioned single foreman is superseded by eight different men, each one of whom has his own special duties…" "…they are able not only to tell the workman what he should do, but in case of necessity they do the work themselves in the presence of the workman, so as to show him not only the best but also the quickest methods."
Why it matters
Taylor splits the foreman's job by function: one teacher for drawings and quality, others for speeds, motions and timing, each acting for the planning department. Each is picked for skill in one specialty and can demonstrate the work, which one generalist foreman can't do across every area.
Use when: One supervisor is expected to coach quality, speed, scheduling and discipline all at once.
Put the planning on a desk, away from the machine
Under the old system the worker did the planning in his head while running the machine.
"…it would be physically impossible for him to work at his machine and at a desk at the same time." "…under scientific management fully one-half of the problem is 'up to the management.'"
Why it matters
Under the old system the worker did the planning in his head while running the machine. Taylor moves it to a planning room and says the work splits better when "one type of man is needed to plan ahead and an entirely different type to execute the work."
Use when: Your best makers are also doing all the scheduling and tooling decisions in their heads.
Hand out the task with the how and the time attached
Taylor's task card was planned a day ahead and came with written method and a time limit, plus a 30 to 100 per cent bonus for hitting it.
"This task specifies not only what is to be done but how it is to be done and the exact time allowed for doing it."
Why it matters
Taylor's task card was planned a day ahead and came with written method and a time limit, plus a 30 to 100 per cent bonus for hitting it. He insists the pace must be one a suited worker can sustain for years.
Use when: Assignments go out as a goal with no method and no time estimate.
White slip, yellow slip
Each morning every laborer got yesterday's result on a colored slip.
"…yellow paper showed the man that he had failed to do his full task the day before…" "…whenever the men received white slips they knew that everything was all right, and whenever they received yellow slips they realized that they must do better…"
Why it matters
Each morning every laborer got yesterday's result on a colored slip. Many couldn't read, and the color carried the message anyway. Daily, individual feedback replaced a foreman's general impression.
Use when: People find out how they're doing only at an annual review.
Send a teacher before you fire
The first response to a miss was instruction.
"…if the workman fails to do his task, some competent teacher should be sent to show him exactly how his work can best be done, to guide, help, and encourage him, and, at the same time, to study his possibilities as a workman."
Why it matters
The first response to a miss was instruction. If that failed the man was moved to work he was better suited to, "instead of brutally discharging the man or lowering his wages."
Use when: Someone misses targets in their first month and the reflex is to let them go.
Gangs sink to the worst man in them
Bethlehem made big gangs a paperwork burden.
"…when men work in gangs, their individual efficiency falls almost invariably down to or below the level of the worst man in the gang…" "…not more than four men were to be allowed to work in a labor gang without a special permit, signed by the General Superintendent…"
Why it matters
Bethlehem made big gangs a paperwork burden. The superintendent ran 5000 men and had little time to sign permits, so work got split into individual tasks with individual pay.
Use when: Output from a team effort is lower than its members manage alone.
Lock quality before you pay for quantity
At the bicycle ball plant, over-inspection came first: trusted inspectors re-checked anonymous lots from the day before.
"It is necessary in almost all cases, therefore, to take definite steps to insure against any falling off in quality before moving in any way towards an increase in quantity."
Why it matters
At the bicycle ball plant, over-inspection came first: trusted inspectors re-checked anonymous lots from the day before. Only after that did output pay begin.
Use when: You're about to start paying or ranking people on volume.
Salt the batch with known defects
Neither inspectors nor over-inspectors could tell the seeded lot from real ones, so each count could be scored against a known answer.
"Every two or three days a lot of balls was especially prepared by the foreman, who counted out a definite number of perfect balls, and added a recorded number of defective balls of each kind."
Why it matters
Neither inspectors nor over-inspectors could tell the seeded lot from real ones, so each count could be scored against a known answer. Taylor says this removed "all temptation to slight their work or make false returns."
Use when: You rely on reviewers or QA and have no way to measure what they miss.
Stop them at an hour and a quarter
The breaks were scheduled just before observed fatigue set in, and the inspectors were required to get up and walk around.
"…after about an hour and one-half of consecutive work they began to get nervous." "It is wise to stop short of the point at which overstrain begins, so we arranged for them to have a ten minutes period for recreation at the end of each hour and one quarter."
Why it matters
The breaks were scheduled just before observed fatigue set in, and the inspectors were required to get up and walk around. Taylor reports the same group earlier lost much of a long day to half-working.
Use when: Detail work like reviewing, proofreading or inspection drifts in quality late in the day.
Select for the one trait the job turns on
Reaction time, measured as in a psychology lab, decided who stayed.
"Mr. Thompson soon recognized that the quality most needed for bicycle ball inspectors was a low personal coefficient." "…this involved laying off many of the most intelligent, hardest working, and most trustworthy girls merely because they did not possess the quality of quick perception followed by quick action."
Why it matters
Reaction time, measured as in a psychology lab, decided who stayed. Taylor admits the cost plainly: good workers lost the job over a trait unrelated to effort or honesty.
Use when: You are hiring on general merit for a job that depends on one measurable ability.
Test the worker's idea and pay for it
Suggestions get a formal experiment against the current standard, and the winner becomes the new standard with credit and cash to its author.
"…whenever the new method is found to be markedly superior to the old, it should be adopted as the standard for the whole establishment. The workman should be given the full credit for the improvement, and should be paid a cash premium as a reward for his ingenuity."
Why it matters
Suggestions get a formal experiment against the current standard, and the winner becomes the new standard with credit and cash to its author.
Use when: You have standardized a process and need a way to keep improving it.
Convert one worker, then wait for a quarter to tip
Taylor put a full changeover at two to three years and sometimes four to five.
"…only one workman at a time should be dealt with at the start. Until this single man has been thoroughly convinced that a great gain has come to him from the new method, no further change should be made." "…very rapid progress can be made, because at about this time there is, generally, a complete revolution in the public opinion of the whole establishment…"
Why it matters
Taylor put a full changeover at two to three years and sometimes four to five. It starts with one convinced worker, and once a quarter to a third of the workforce has switched, opinion turns and the rest ask to join.
Use when: You are rolling out a new way of working and want to announce it to everyone on day one.
Arguments
Stop hunting for the ready-made hire
Taylor says demand for competent people always runs ahead of supply because everyone is shopping for the finished product.
"What we are all looking for, however, is the readymade, competent man; the man whom some one else has trained."
Why it matters
Taylor says demand for competent people always runs ahead of supply because everyone is shopping for the finished product. His alternative is to systematically train the competent hire yourself.
Use when: A role has been open for months because nobody fully qualified applies.
Copying the tools without the philosophy breaks things
Taylor lists his own tools, including time study, instruction cards, slide rules and the planning room, and warns they fail when used without real cooperation with the workers.
"The mechanism of management must not be mistaken for its essence, or underlying philosophy. Precisely the same mechanism will in one case produce disastrous results and in another the most beneficent."
Why it matters
Taylor lists his own tools, including time study, instruction cards, slide rules and the planning room, and warns they fail when used without real cooperation with the workers. He says rushed adoptions have ended in strikes.
Use when: You are adopting another company's process tools as a quick fix.
Concepts
Fifty ways to do a task, one is fastest
Skills passed on by watching the person at the next bench produce dozens of local variants.
"…there are many different ways in common use for doing the same thing, perhaps forty, fifty, or a hundred ways of doing each act in each trade…" "…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."
Why it matters
Skills passed on by watching the person at the next bench produce dozens of local variants. Taylor's claim is that comparing them element by element turns up a best one that can be taught.
Use when: Every person on the team does the same recurring task differently.
Evidence
The twelve-year-old caddy's pay lesson
A twelve-year-old had worked out the incentive and the enforcement on his own.
"…since they were paid by the hour, the faster they went the less money they got, and finally telling him that if he went too fast the other boys would give him a licking."
Why it matters
A twelve-year-old had worked out the incentive and the enforcement on his own. Hourly pay rewarded slowness, and the group policed anyone who went faster.
Use when: You are setting up pay for work where you can't easily see the pace.
Rest 57 per cent of the day and carry more
Carl Barth plotted the data and found that how heavy the load was set how much of the day a man could be under it.
"…when pig iron is being handled (each pig weighing 92 pounds), a first-class workman can only be under load 43 per cent of the day. He must be entirely free from load during 57 per cent of the day."
Why it matters
Carl Barth plotted the data and found that how heavy the load was set how much of the day a man could be under it. Scheduled rest was what made the higher daily tonnage possible.
Use when: People are grinding without breaks on heavy work and output is falling.
Size the shovel to the material, aim for 21 pounds
One shovel per man meant he was overloaded on ore and nearly idle on coal.
"…it was found that a first-class man would do his biggest day's work with a shovel load of about 21 pounds." "…he would frequently go from shoveling ore, with a load of about 30 pounds per shovel, to handling rice coal, with a load on the same shovel of less than 4 pounds."
Why it matters
One shovel per man meant he was overloaded on ore and nearly idle on coal. Bethlehem stocked 8 to 10 shovel types so every material came out near the same optimal load.
Use when: Everyone uses the same tool for every job because that's the tool they own.
Wish them well at the higher rate and leave the door open
Bethlehem urged its best shovelers to take a higher per-ton offer in Pittsburgh.
"Just remember, however, that at any time in the future, when you get out of a job, you can always come right back to us." "Now, Jimmy, you and I will throw a shovel full whenever this little devil throws one, and not another shovel full."
Why it matters
Bethlehem urged its best shovelers to take a higher per-ton offer in Pittsburgh. Most came back within six weeks to the lower rate, because the Pittsburgh gang pace had cut their real earnings.
Use when: A competitor is offering your people a better headline rate.
Bring the bricks up to the bricklayer
Frank Gilbreth raised the scaffold, pre-sorted bricks into packs and tempered the mortar so bricks needed no tapping.
"…each bricklayer lowering his body, weighing, say, 150 pounds, down two feet and raising it up again every time a brick (weighing about 5 pounds) is laid in the wall! And this each bricklayer did about one thousand times a day." "…Mr. Gilbreth has reduced his movements from eighteen motions per brick to five…"
Why it matters
Frank Gilbreth raised the scaffold, pre-sorted bricks into packs and tempered the mortar so bricks needed no tapping. Taylor reports 350 bricks per man per hour against a local average of 120.
Use when: A skilled job still has the same physical setup it had decades ago.
The vote said no, the shorter day raised output
Individually the inspectors agreed ten hours would do.
"…when the vote was taken the girls were unanimous that 10 1/2 hours was good enough for them and they wanted no innovation of any kind." "…with each shortening of the working day the output increased instead of diminishing."
Why it matters
Individually the inspectors agreed ten hours would do. As a group they voted it down. Months later Taylor cut hours in steps to 8 1/2 at the same pay and output rose each time. He calls the vote a lapse into tact he regretted.
Use when: You plan to put a change to a group vote that people agreed to one by one.
A stranger with a slide rule beat the twelve-year veteran
The lathe had been run for ten to twelve years by a first-class mechanic.
"…the gain in time made through running the machine according to scientific principles ranged from two and one-half times the speed in the slowest instance to nine times the speed in the highest."
Why it matters
The lathe had been run for ten to twelve years by a first-class mechanic. A man who had never seen the jobs, using slide rules built from years of metal-cutting experiments, set speeds and feeds that beat him on every part.
Use when: You assume long experience on a machine means the settings are already optimal.
Are you a high-priced man?
Taylor tied the job to a wage the man wanted ($1.85 against $1.15) and to doing exactly what a man with a stopwatch said, including when to rest.
"Schmidt, are you a high-priced man?" "He worked when he was told to work, and rested when he was told to rest, and at half-past five in the afternoon had his 47 and a half tons loaded on the car."
Why it matters
Taylor tied the job to a wage the man wanted ($1.85 against $1.15) and to doing exactly what a man with a stopwatch said, including when to rest. He says the pitch kept Schmidt's attention "on the high wages which he wants." This is Taylor's account; it has not been checked against outside sources.
Use when: You are offering more pay in exchange for following a prescribed method exactly.