Description

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915), widely known as F. W. Taylor, was an American mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. A management consultant in his later years, he is sometimes called "the father of scientific management. " He was one of the intellectual leaders of the Efficiency Movement and his ideas, broadly conceived, were highly influential in the Progressive Era. In 1874, he became an apprentice patternmaker, gaining shopfloor experience that would inform the rest of his career. He obtained a degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1883. Taylor began developing his management philosophies during his time at the Midvale Steel Works, where he rose to be chief engineer for the plant. Louis Brandeis, who was an active propagandist of Taylorism, coined the term Scientific Management in the course of his argument for the Eastern Rate Case, which Taylor used in the title of his monograph The Principles of Scientific Management, published in 1911. Taylor also wrote Shop Management (1903).