Time - Motion Studies and Scientific Management in Business

Time and motion study is considered a major part of scientific management. It was used by Henry Ford (Fordism) when producing the Ford Model T. It was because of the results provided from those studies which provided for the assembly line method and why Ford became extremely profitable.

Ford even went on to explain that in general workers forced to perform repetitive tasks work at the slowest rate goes unpunished. This slow rate of work might be called "loafing" or "malingering", which was based on his observations. So this was the reason why many manufacturing industries engage the use of repetitive and tedious work. It keeps the mind and body prone to the time needed to keep the best rate of production at task.

A Quaker by faith, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856 - 1915), the influential American mechanical engineer by trade and management consultant in his later years was revolutionary with his concepts on improved efficiency. In 1874, he would first start down his path by working as an apprentice patternmaker. He would then obtain a mechanical engineering degree from taking courses from the Stevens Institute of Technology graduating in 1883.

While at Midvale Steel, he eventually became chief engineer and began to develop personal philosophies. Frederick W. Taylor would become professor at the oldest and one of the best business schools in the world, the Tuck School of Business located at Dartmouth College, in New Hanover, New Hampshire. From 1906 - 1907, Taylor would be president of the Americans Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). And he would go on to influence America's Progressive Era with his views based on how scientific management should be enforced.