Taylorism

TAYLORISM

Henry Ford thought that the assembly line was based on three principles:
1) the planned orderly and continuous progression of the commodity through the shop;
2) the delivery of work instead of leaving it to the workmen’s initiative to find it;
3) an analysis of operations into their parts.
On these principles Taylor began to study in 1881 at the Midvale Steel Company in United States.
He studied the organization of manufacturing operations and in 1911 he published “Scientific Management”, which is a guide in how to manage people and work process more efficiently.
According to Taylor, the task of factory management was to decide the best way for the worker to do his job, to provide him with tools, to train him to follow instructions for good performance.
He broke each job down into its constituent motions, he corrected the unnecessary movements and he eliminated all the “idle” times. So all the work became more efficiently.
In some cases, Taylor delegated some tasks to specialists.
In this way he could control much more the working processes and the management’s power increased.
Taylor thought that the working processes could be described by rules, laws and formulas, and so he wanted to use all human and material resources to have a good performance.
He also thought that scientific knowledge could help to find the best way of working processes, but he didn’t consider the psychical and physical need of workmen, considering them as passive instruments.
The Taylorism in fact caused fatigue along with physiological and neurological damage among workers, and so the work became dull, monotony and meaningless.