The world knew him as “the father of scientific management.” Frederick Winslow Taylor was a charismatic man. He was born on March 20, 1865 family in Philadelphia, USA. He graduated from the Stevens Institute of technology while holding a full-time job. It all began when he was accepted at Harvard to pursue Law in 1872, but his deteriorating eyesight kept him off and he had to choose an alternative carrier. After being depressed in 1873, he became an apprentice patternmaker at Enterprise Hydraulic Works in Philadelphia. In 1878, he became a top machine laborer at Midvale Steel Institute of Technology. He rose through the ranks to become a chief engineer. It is while he was here that he took night study at Stevens Institute of Technology (Papesh, 1990).
In 1893, Taylor opened an independent consulting firm. Later, he joined Bethlehem Steel where he helped to develop high-speed steel, for which he was awarded the Elliot Cresson gold medal by the Franklin Institute. In 1906, he was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Science by the University of Pennsylvania and eventually became a professor at the Tuck School of Business (Papesh, 1990).
Taylor had invaluable ideas in industrial management. He believed that the industrial management of his time was not professional and that the management could be transformed into an academic discipline. This, he said, could lead to the best results that would be combined with trained and qualified management and integrated into an innovative workforce. His form of management was based on four principles: he intended to replace the rule of the thumb with methods based on scientific tasks; he also intended to have staff trained scientifically rather than being left to train themselves passively. Thirdly, he recommended that each worker be supervised closely. Finally, he was of the opinion that work is divided equally between managers and workers to hasten the division of labor (Papesh, 1990).
He left his great ideas to the world when he died on March 21, 1915.
Reference
Papesh, Mary Ellen. Frederick Winslow Taylor.1990. Web.