What is taylorism and what does it have to do with manufacturing?

Taylorism is an idea that was thought of by Frederick Winslow Taylor in his book The Principles of Scientific Management. Taylorism is also known as scientific management or the classical perspective. Frederick Taylor believed that decisions based upon tradition and rules of thumb should be replaced by more precise procedures. But these procedures could not be developed until the individual at work was carefully studied.

Taylorism consists of the following general approaches:
 Standard method for performing each and every job
 Certain workers would be selected for certain jobs based on their abilities to perform the job, meaning that they would be chosen for the job based upon if they had the required skills necessary for the job
 Training would be provided to each person who was hired for the job, the training would be centered around how to perform the job that they were hired for
 The work day would be planned for each employee ahead of time, this way they could eliminating most of the interruptions that occur from not having the day planned out
 If an employee out performed other employees, such as increased productivity or output, they would be given a wage incentive, such as a raise or a bonus

Taylorism makes the following contributions to the workforce:
 It provides a scientific approach to business management and process improvement
 It taught people about the importance of compensation for performance, which would be giving wage incentives for people who are performing better than others
 It taught managers about carefully studying the tasks that were required as well as the jobs
 Taught managers and business owners about the importance of selecting the right person for the right job and then training that person so that the job would be performed correctly

The elements that make up taylorism are:
 Labor is defined, meaning that the tasks for the job are clearly explained so that people can understand it and authority/responsibility is official
 There is a hierarchy in the workplace and the positions of each employee is placed into that hierarchy
 Selection for the job is based on how well they can perform the job, if they are qualified and what kind of experience they have
 Any action and decision is recorded in order to allow continuity and memory
 Management is not the same as ownership in the company
 Management follows the same rules and regulation as the employees so that they can set a good example.

Two issues that were recognized by Taylor but were not addressed by managers were:
 It ignores individual differences, this would cover the fact that what works for one employee might not work for a different employee, so while one person's production increases another persons production decreased
 It does not address the fact that the economic interests of the workers and managers are rarely the same, so the employees would mostly likely resent and sabotage Taylor's methods of measuring processes and retraining

Like fordism, taylorism is closely associated with mass production methods in manufacturing factories. What Taylor discovered when observing factory workers was that they tended to work as slow as they could without getting into trouble. He felt that because the workers were getting paid the same amount as everybody else nobody wanted to do more work than the slowest person. Taylor felt that through the use of taylorism manufacturing plants could increase their output by offering wage incentives for people who performed the best and increased their output. Taylor also discovered that if you gave employee breaks throughout the day they could increase their output as well.

Back when taylorism first came out not many people thought his ideas would work, but if you look at our economy today you will still find some of his principles at work.

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Categories: Management,

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