Frank Bunker GILBRETH- Lillian Moller GILBRETH (GILBRETHS)
Frederick W. TAYLOR
Henry FAYOL
Max WEBER
Abraham MASLOW
a) Briefly explain these people by defining their main study area, the main contributions of these people to science and the relations of these contributions with any other VIP’s study (if there are any relation). (You can explain the attributes of Frank Bunker GILBRETH and Lillian Moller GILBRETH under the same title as “Gilbreths”)
Gilbreths :
Frank Bunker Gilbreth : July 7, 1868, Fairfield, Maine – June 14, 1924, Montchair, New Jersey
Lillian Moller Gilbreth : May 24, 1878, Oakland, California- January 2, 1972, Phoenix, Arizona
Frank was an early advocate of scientific management and a pioneer of motion study. Perhaps he is the best known as the father of “Cheaper By Dozen”. Lillian was one of the first working female engineers. Frank did not have formal education beyond high school. He was a bricklayer but then he became a building contractor, an inventor and an evolved into management engineer. He became a lecturer at Purdue University. He married Lillian Moller Gilbreth in 1904 and they had 12 children. Frank died suddenly of heath failure at age 55 and his wife outlived him by 48 years.
Frank discovered his job when he was a building contractor. He looked for ways to make bricklaying faster and easier. Frank and Lillian tried in all sorts of industries to find ways to increase output and make their jobs easier. They founded a management consulting firm which focuses on such endeavors.
Gilbreth reduced all motions of hand into some combinations of 18 basic motions which includes grasp, transport loaded and hold. He named the motions “therbligs” which is the backwards spell of Gilbreth. He used a camera to time the smallest of motions in workers. Gilbreths were scientists sought to teach managers that all aspects of the workplace should be questioned and improvements constantly adopted. Therbligs predates the development of CQI because in late 20th century it is understood that repeated motions can lead to workers experiencing repetitive motion injuries.
Gilbreth proposed that a surgical nurse serve as "caddy" (Gilbreth's term) to a surgeon, by handing surgical instruments to the surgeon as called for. He devised the standard techniques used by armies to teach recruits how to rapidly disassemble and reassemble their weapons even when blindfolded or in total darkness. These innovations have arguably helped save millions of lives.
Although Gilbreths’ work associates with Frederick Taylor, there was a philosophical difference between them. The symbol of Taylorism was the stopwatch and it was primarily concerned with reducing the time of processes. Gilbreths tried to make process more efficient by reducing the motions involved. They gave more importance to welfare of workers than Taylor. This led to a personal rift between Taylor and Gilbrets. Gilbreths often used their large family as guinea pigs in experiments. Their family detailed in the book “Cheaper By Dozen.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Bunker_Gilbreth
Frederick Winslow Taylor :
March 20, 1856- March 21, 1915. He was an American mechanical engineer who tried to improve industrial efficiency. He is sometimes called the father of scientific management.
He was the son of a wealthy Quaker family. His parents wanted him to attend Harvard University but instead he became an apprentice patternmaker, gaining shop-floor experience that would inform the rest of his career. He obtained a degree in mechanical engineering. He began developing his management philosophies when he was at the Midvale Steel works- where he rose to be chief engineer for the plant. Later, he and Maunsel White developed high speed steel. He became a professor at the “Tuck School of Business”.
He believed that the industrial management of his day was amateurish. Also he believed that the best results would come from the partnership between a trained and qualified management and a cooperative and innovative workforce. Each side needed the other and so there was no need for trade unions.
Taylor said that even the most basic tasks could be planned in that way would increase productivity and also, that scientific management of the work was more effective than the “initiative and incentive” method of motivating workers. The initiative and incentive method offered an encouragement to increase productivity but gives more responsibility of the worker to figure out how to do it. He made experiments to determine the optimal way to perform a job. These experiments were characterized by the use of a stopwatch to time the worker’s sequence of motions with the aim of determining the best way to make a job.
Taylor’s scientific management consisted of four principles:
1. Replace rule-of-thumb work methods with methods based on a scientific study of the tasks.
2. Scientifically select, train and develop each employee rather than passively leaving them to train themselves.
3. Provide “Detailed instruction and supervision of each worker in the performance of that worker’s discrete task”
4. Divide work nearly equally between managers and workers, so that the managers apply scientific management principles to planning the work and the workers actually perform the tasks.
These principles were implemented in many factories, often increasing productivity by the factor of three or more. Hanry ford applied these principles in his automobile factories.
As these principles improved productivity, they also increased the monotony of the work. Skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback were missing from the picture of scientific management.
Workers were supposed to be incapable of understanding what they were doing. Taylor believed this was true even for simple tasks. Workers who were working in Taylorism tested factories often resented and provoked many strikes to the introduction of his systems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor
http://www.netmba.com/mgmt/scientific/
Henry Fayol :
1841 Istanbul- 1925 Paris. He was a French management theorist.
He proposed that there are 5 primary functions of management.
1. Planning
2. Organizing
3. Commanding
4. Coordinating
5. Controlling
Controlling can be defined as; a manager should receive feedback on a process for making necessary adjustments. Many of today’s management texts include the five functions of four: 1) planning, 2) organizing, 3) leading 4) controlling. Fayol said that it is important to have unity of command: a thing, says; there should be only one supervisor for each person in an organization. Also, he suggested that management is a worldwide activity that applies equally well to the family as it does to the company.
Fayol can be described as the “father of modern operational management theory”. His ideas became universal part of modern management concepts; but still, some writers associate him with Frederick Taylor. Taylor’s scientific management deals with the efficient organization of production to control the costs, whereas this was only the one of the many areas of Fayol. The difference between Fayol and Taylor was that, Taylor viewed management processes from bottom to top, while Fayol viewed them from top to down.
Fayol is graduated from the mining academy of St. Etienne. When he was graduated he started as managing director of a mining company. He developed hic concept of administration largely based on his own management experience.
He has 14 principles of his management:
1. Specialization of labor
2. Authority
3. Discipline
4. Unity of command
5. Unity of direction
6. Subordination of individual interests
7. Remuneration
8. Centralization
9. Chain of superiors
10. Order
11. Equity
12. Personal tenure
13. Initiative
14. Esprit de corps
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Fayol
Max Weber :
21 April 1864-14 June 1920. He was a German political economist and sociologist. He is one of the founders of the modern study of sociology and public administration. His works deal with rationalization in sociology of religion and government.
Weber was born in Germany. He was the son of a prominent liberal politician and civil servant, and a moderate Calvinist. He grew up in an intellectual atmosphere. At the age 14, he had extended knowledge of Goethe, Spinoza, Kant and Schopenhauer before he began university. It seemed clear that, he would study social sciences.
In 1882 he enrolled in the University of Heidelberg as a law student. Along his coursework, he attended lectures in economics, medieval history and theology. Then he studied at University of Berlin and University of Goettingen. In late 1880s he continued his study of history.
Max Weber outlined the characteristics of a bureaucracy:
- specification of jobs with detailed rights, obligations, responsibilities, scope of authority
- system of supervision and subordination
- unity of command
- extensive use of written documents
- training in job requirements and skills
- application of rules (company manual)
- assign work and hire personnel based on competence and experience
Max Weber began to study the new forms of organization developed for managing people in far-flung and complex activities. Germany had been an early leader in developing a civil service. At the same time, German industry was beginning to use the methods developed in the United States. Surveying this scene, Weber attempted to isolate the elements common to all of these new organizations.
He said that all these new large-scale organizations were similar. Each was a bureaucracy. Weber's purpose, was to define the essential properties of new organizations.also, he aimed to find why new organizations worked so much better than traditional one. While people were developing modern organizations, they aimed to find solutions to the new problems. Weber defined bureaucracy as the product of social engineering, just as the machines of the Industrial Revolution were the products of mechanical engineering. For Weber bureaucracy was inseparable from the term rationality. Weber's idea of functional specialization applies to persons within an organization and to relations between larger units or divisions of the organization. He states that such specialization is essential to a rational bureaucracy and that the specific boundaries separating one functional division from another must be fixed by explicit rules, regulations, and procedures. For him there are clear "levels of graded authority." All employees must know who their boss is, and each person should always respect the chain of command. In addition, hierarchical authority is required in bureaucracies so that highly trained experts can be used as managers. Rational bureaucracies can be operated. Persons working at top positions in bureaucracies are often rotated through many divisions of an organization to gain firsthand experience of the many problems they may face. Finally, Weber emphasised that rational bureaucracies hve to be managed in accordance with rules and principles.
http://www.analytictech.com/mb021/bureau.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_weber
Abraham Maslow :
April 1, 1908- June 8, 1970. He was an American psycologist.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs pyramid classifies the human needs. They can be classified as conotive, cognitive and aesthetic needs. Needs are arranged in pyramid in terms of their potency. Although all of them are important, some are more powerful than others. The lower needs in pyramid are the most powerful ones. The lower needs can be described as the basic needs. First four layers are deficiency needs, others are growth needs. The basement of the pyramid is formed by psychological needs. After a person meets with psychological needs, he concentrates on second level- safety and security. The third level includes the need for love and belonging and the fourth level is esteem needs which requires the recognition from other people. Finally, self actualization sits on the top of the pyramid. He theorized that unfulfilled cognitive needs may become redirected into neurotic needs. Neurotic needs do not promote health or growth if they are satisfied. People who reached self actualization become aware of not only their own fullest potential, but the fullest potential of human beings at large. Maslow’s theory contains growth, happiness and satisfaction of every person. He believes to be motivated that it is not driven by reducing tension or avoiding frustration that people look for a positive view.
According to him the tendencies for self actualizing people are as follows :
1. Awareness
2. Honesty
3. Freedom
4. Trust
He discovered that a healthy people motivate toward self-actualization and self-actualizing people have similar characteristics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow
b) If you were one of these people, which one would you prefer to be? Why? Or what would you do different?
2) a) Search about the origins of engineering and beginning of engineering education. (Realize that they are not the same thing). Briefly explain the findings of your research.
The engineering education began when universities began training people to build or invent things. In 1600s, armies started to train officers in maths and mechanics because of complex guns. Then, civil engineering followed this. In 1775 the king of France set up a school that gives education about bridges and highways for three years. In 1795 a new form of military engineering was being taught in a town. This was before the military academy.
http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1107.htm
http://www.creatingtechnology.org/history.htm
b) What do you understand from the definition of “engineering as a profession”?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering
c) From your research, conclude what engineers do.
- They learn mathemeatics to utilize economics.
- They learn natural sciences to use them for welfare of humanity.
- They do or build things for the benefit of human beings.
- They use their knowledge to get better business and they solve technical problems.
- Their main working area is designing, development, testing, production and maintenance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering
d) Briefly explain types of engineers. Describe the industrial engineers’ role regarding other types of engineers.
Engineers can be categorized in order the work they do. Some engineering are:
- Aeronautical or Astronautical engineers : Study jet engines and aircraft design. They may also work on applications for space missions.
- Agricultural engineers : Design farm equipment, animal shelters, crop systems, and product processing systems.
- Chemical engineers : Develop processes and products made with chemicals perhaps in the food, petroleum, or pharmaceutical industries.
- Civil engineers : Design roads, buildings, transportation systems, and other large-scale construction projects. Categories within this area may include structural, environmental, geological, hydraulic, transportation and construction engineering.
- Electrical and computer engineers : Design, construct, and maintain electronic systems, which may include working with computer chips, circuits and electronic communications.
- Geological engineers : Solves earth related technical problems while at the same time protecting the environment.
- Industrial engineers : Plan and design industrial and business facilities for the best product quality and employee working conditions.
- Materials engineers : Study metals, ceramics, plastics, and composites to design materials for applications that may involve transportation, communication or power production.
- Mechanical engineers : Create machines and may work on transportation systems, power production or performance analysis.
- Nuclear engineers : Work with nuclear reactors, fusion and radiation applications.
Industrial Engineer’s Role :
It is different from other types of engineering because it deals with the factor “human”. Its main topic is motivating people, finding solutions to production problems and obtaining the high quality. They are not as much interested in development of process as industrial management. Most of the works of them are: plant layout, increase worker productivity, control the quality of products, reduce and control costs. Most of them are get employed by industries but they can work for any business, also.
http://www.madison.k12.wi.us/toki/teched/vtypes.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering#History
