Taylorism

Definition
Production efficiency methodology that breaks every action,job, or task into small and simple segments which can be easily analyzed and taught. Introduced in the early 20th century, Taylorism (1) aims to achieve maximum jobfragmentation to minimize skill requirements and joblearning time, (2) separates execution of work from work-planning, (3) separates direct labor from indirect labor (4) replaces rule of thumb productivity estimates with precisemeasurements, (5) introduces time and motion study foroptimum job performance, cost accounting, tool and work station design, and (6) makes possible payment-by-resultmethod of wage determination. Named after the USindustrial engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor (18561915) who in his 1911 book 'Principles Of Scientific Management' laid down the fundamental principles of large-scalemanufacturing through assemblyline factories. He emphasized gaining maximum efficiency from both machineand worker, and maximization of profit for the benefit ofboth workers and management. Although rightly criticized for alienating workers by (indirectly but substantially) treating them as mindless, emotionless, and easily replicablefactors of production, Taylorism was a critical factor in the unprecedented(unknown) scale of US factory output that led to Allied victory in Second World War, and the subsequent US dominance of the industrial world. See also Fordism.

A manufacturing tool, first made popular by Henry Ford in his manufacturing of automobiles. The principle of an assembly line is that each worker is assigned one very specific task, which he or she simply repeats, and then theprocess moves to the next worker who does his or her task, until the task is completed and the product is made. It is a way to mass produce goods quickly and efficiently. Allworkers do not have to be human; robotic workers canmake up an assembly line as well.

Fordism

Definition
A manufacturing philosophy that aims to achieve higherproductivity by standardizing the output, using conveyorassembly lines, and breaking the work into small deskilledtasks. Whereas Taylorism (on which Fordism is based) seeksmachine and worker efficiency, Fordism seeks to combinethem as one unit, and emphasizes minimization of costsinstead of maximization of profit. Named after its famous proponent, the US automobile pioneer Henry Ford (1863-1947).

Taylorism, System of scientific management advocated by Fred W. Taylor. In Taylors view, the task of factory
management was to determine the best way for the worker to do the job, to provide the proper tools and training, and to provide incentives for good performance. He broke each job down into its individual motions, analyzed these to determine which were essential, and timed the workers with a stopwatch. With unnecessary motion eliminated, the worker, following a machinelike routine, became far more productive.

Fordism after Henry Ford (1863-1947); method of industrial management based on assembly-line methods production of cheap, uniform commodities in high volume, and winning employee loyalty with good wages, but intolerant of unionism or employee participation. Henry Ford was born on the family farm near Dearborn, Michigan, but at 19 began part-time work at the nearby Westinghouse Engine Company while tinkering at home in his own machine shop. He soon moved to Detroit and in 1894 made chief engineer at the Detroit electricity plant. Working in his spare time, by 1896 he had completed his first horseless carriage. Ford Motor Company was founded in 1903 and claiming I will build a motor car for the great multitude, Ford produced the first the Model T in October 1908. Over the 19 years following, Ford sold 15,500,000 Model Ts in the US, 1,000,000 more in Canada, and 250,000 in Britain as many cars as produced by all other producers in the entire world during the same period, all identical in design and all black. Surely more than anyone else responsible for the invention of the modern world, Ford has been recorded as stating: history is more or less bunk. He was also a pacifist and opposed the First World War.

There were two interrelated aspects of Fords revolution that contributed to the transformation wrought by these 17 million motor cars. Firstly, the assembly-line system in the Ford plant in Highland Park, Michigan, with its constantly moving conveyor belt and minute division of labour which, by 1913, was able to deliver just-on-time parts, subassemblies, and assemblies (themselves built on subsidiary assembly lines) with precise timing, reduced the production time of a complete chassis from 728 minutes to 93 minutes and by 1927 Ford was turning out a Model T every 24 seconds. Secondly, in 1914, Ford announced that it would henceforth pay workers a minimum wage of $5 a day, more than double the average for the motor industry at that time, and simultaneously reduced the working day from nine hours to eight, operating the plant 24-hours-a-day with a three-shift system. These moves made Ford a worldwide celebrity, but his motives were sound business sense. Ford workers could aspire to buy a Ford motor car, as the price of a Model T fell from $950 in 1908 to $290 in 1927. Previously, profit had been based on paying wages as low as workers would take and pricing cars as high as the market would bear. Ford, on the other hand, stressed low pricing to capture the widest possible market and then met the price by volume and efficiency. Later on, in resisting further automation of his factory, Henry Ford remarked Robots dont buy motor cars. The $5 a day wage that brought him attention in 1914 brought with it an overbearing paternalism. Further, it was no guarantee for the future. In 1932, with sales as falling as a result of the Great Depression, Ford cut wages from $7 to $4 a day, below prevailing industry rate. Ford freely employed company police, labour spies, and violence to prevent unionisation and continued to do so even after other manufacturers had signed contracts with the United Auto Workers, which did not succeed in organising Fords factory until 1941. So Fordism refers to this policy of winning the loyalty of workers to profit from a high-wage economy, by producing commodities for the masses as cheaply as possible by the application of assembly line techniques. It was this policy which brought the United States to the position of the dominant capitalist power by the end of World War Two.

The difficulties with Fordism was that while it depended absolutely on the loyalty of the workers it offered no room for innovation or worker participation, and the low price was achieved at the price of mind-numbing uniformity and indifference to market demands: market demand was the result not the driving force of production. P.S. Ford did not invent the assembly line. The idea of the moving belt originated in the 19th-century meat-packing industry in Cincinnati and Chicago, and the mass production of absolutely uniform components for later assembly, originated in the Colt gun factory. The Waltham Watch Company, invented the "transfer machine", precursor of the industrial conveyor belt, in 1888. The word automation was however invented by Ford, in 1940.

Taylorism after Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) the American inventor and engineer who was the first to make a scientific study of industrial management. Taylors system of management corresponds to the early development of mass production and assembly line manufacture and is characterised by extreme elaboration of thedivision of labour, the reduction of work to machine-like repetitive operations, and extreme labour discipline and supervision of work, aimed at minimising production time per unit of commodity. Taylor abandoned plans to study at Harvard due to poor eyesight as a result of excessive study. As soon as his eyesight was better, he began work at Midvale Steel as a machine shop labourer, but moved rapidly up the ranks to chief engineer. In 1881, at the tender age of 25, he introduced timeand-motion study at the Midvale plant. The aim was to eliminate every wasted action and achieve the maximum possible efficiency; efficiency was conceived in the narrowest way as minimisation of the labour time necessary for the production of a given product. Taylor retired at age 45 but continued to lecture at universities and professional societies.

Prior to Taylor, productivity was assumed to be achieved by reducing the number of non-productive workers such as clerks and supervisors; a proportion of 10% was regarded as the upper limit for such non-productive workers. Taylor, however, advocated achieving efficiency by close observation and control of the labour process. By breaking the production process down into its constituent parts and measuring the time required for each minute operation, observing and measuring every movement of the hand, the productivity of individual workers could be greatly increased. This meant, however, employing large numbers of supervisors and clerks, with up to one in four being employed in such supervisory tasks. Not surprisingly, the introduction of Taylorism into factories generates sharp opposition from the productive workers. Taylorism reduces the worker to an automaton and denies the worker any chance for relief or modulation of the pace of work and is enormously stressful and oppressive. The intense supervision means that any resistance or go-slow by the worker is responded to instantly. However, Taylorisms regime iron discipline brings with it the possibility of buying-off workers by promoting individuals into the swollen ranks of supervisors and other white-collar workers. Since productive work is reduced to automatic activities totally lacking in skill, labour discipline is made easier by limiting recruitment for these roles to the poorest and most unorganised layers of workers. Nowadays, Taylorism is a synonym for the most backward style of management, since it depends on the elimination of all initiative on the part of the productive worker, depending for its success entirely on the effectiveness of labour discipline. It is easy to see the kind of class composition and class relations that are generated in the society in which Taylorism prevails in the major industries: the productive workers are utterly alienated from society and poor and uneducated to boot; there is a substantial layer of those people who wear white coats and carry clip boards the inspectors, overseers, foremen, floor managers, clerks and bureaucrats of all kinds, who defend the system and are hated by the mass of unskilled blue-collar workers. The unions, when they are formed, are as obstinate and penny-pinching as the employers. The mass, blue-collar, unionised, class-conscious, hard-nosed and disciplined, unskilled male workers which form the classic image of the proletariat of the early part of the twentieth century is a product of Taylorist capitalism.

In 1915, as part of his studies for Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin made a study of work organisation in the United States, including a close study of the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor (see Collected Works Volume 39, Beta Notebook). After the revolution, facing the severe crisis and the backward state of Russian industry, including its workforce, Lenin was insistent on the introduction of Taylorism into Soviet factories: We must raise the question of piece-work and apply and test it in practice; we must raise the question of applying much of what is scientific and progressive in the Taylor system; we must make wages correspond to the total amount of goods turned out. (see Immediate tasks of the Soviet Government, March 1918). Opposition to this practice is alluded to inLeftWing Communism, An Infantile Disorder, 1920. In fact Taylorism remained ever after the methodology of the Soviet economy.