The impact of the Fordism - Taylorism on Operations Management.

Résumé du document

If Charlie Chaplin could speak, he would probably have complained about the working conditions of the working-class at the beginning of the XX th century. He is, in his movie "Modern Times", making fun about the new organization of work in factories. Sure enough, two American engineers and company creators developed a new conception of manual work almost at the same time, in order to improve profitability. Today we are going to speak about the consequences of Fordism and Taylorism, their theories. Before the application of the Fordism and Taylorism, the workers were left to themselves. They had no training and had to learn on their own the specificities of their job. They discovered it alone, and no one showed them the appropriate movement. The first consequence of this self-training was that the worker had the feeling of being left apart, or abandoned. The second and more annoying consequence of this self-training was the low productivity that stemmed from it. Workers did not perform the most efficient movement in most cases, because nobody had taken the time to analyze the job and try to deduct the best way to achieve it.

Extraits

[...] After that decisional part, directors have to cooperate enthusiastically with their workers to make sure that each task has been executed following the rules they just created. So the top of the pyramid has more a supervision task whereas workers apply their orders. For Taylor, the worker is not here to think but only to apply the movements scientifically calculated for him Application & impact a. Consequences: the industry saved! Quickly, changes have been observed, especially the fast increase of production, thanks to those divisions and the studies concerning the perfect movement. [...]

[...] In a way, standardization helped to reduce unemployment. b. The work's scientifically organization, maybe not a perfect solution? Our first concern is about the diversification of the products. Because a mass-production has been planned, it looks quite difficult to get a big diversity of goods. Moreover, the taylo fordism can be assimilated to the beginning of the assembly line work, which means a more automatically job than before, which leads usually to a decreasing quality. This system also preferred number than quality. [...]

[...] A self-trained working class Before the application of the Fordism Taylorism, the workers were left to themselves. They had no training and had to learn on their own the specificities of their job. They discovered it alone, and no one showed them the appropriate movement. The first consequence of this self - training was that the worker had the impression to be let apart, to be abandoned. b. Lower productivity The second and more annoying consequence of this self - training was the small productivity that stemmed from it. [...]

[...] The application of the taylo - fordism methods also helped decreasing the production costs. That is explained by the fact that, first, with the job repartition, only a precise number of workers was needed, and this number has been precisely established. Another explanation of these lower costs is that thanks to the distribution of the jobs depending to anybody's abilities, the product loss during the assembling decreased. Workers did not have to be able to realize every step of the product perfectly anymore, but only one of these steps. [...]

[...] And as soon as it could become critical, these theories have evolved in order to satisfy everybody. Finally, even if these new organizations were very controversial, they changed the approach we had to production. Later, board workers have been mostly replaced by machines, but this step was necessary. Misters Taylor and Ford had had the idea of mass production; they only missed the technological tools to get the today's approach. Good thing or bad thing, we are just forced to admit that between the single product made entirely by a single worker and the mass production helped by the assembly line work, the whole production process has evolved, and so did the operation management. [...]