Frederick Winslow Taylor was an American engineer and inventor who is known as the father of scientific management. His system of industrial management has influenced and provided benefits in modern industry world-wide. He introduced “time and motion study”
Taylor was the son of a lawyer. He entered Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire in 1872, where he led his class scholastically. After passing the entrance examination for Harvard University, he was forced to abandon plans for matriculation, as his eyesight had deteriorated from night study. With sight restored in 1875, he was apprenticed to learn the trades of patternmaker and machinist at the Enterprise Hydraulic Works in Philadelphia. Three years later he went to the Midvale Steel Company, where, starting as a machine shop labourer, he became successively shop clerk, machinist, gang boss, foreman, maintenance foreman, head of the drawing office, and chief engineer. In 1881, at age 25, he introduced time study at the Midvale plant. The profession of time study was founded on the success of this project, which also formed the basis of Taylor’s subsequent theories of management science. Essentially, Taylor suggested that production efficiency in a shop or factory could be greatly enhanced by close observation of individual workers and elimination of waste time and motion in their operation. Studying at night, Taylor earned a degree in mechanical engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology in 1883. The following year he became chief engineer at Midvale and completed the design and construction of a novel machine shop. Taylor might have enjoyed a brilliant full-time career as an inventor—he had more than 40 patents to his credit
He served a long list of prominent firms ending with the Bethlehem Steel Corporation; while at Bethlehem he developed high-speed steel and performed notable experiments in shoveling and pig-iron handling.