Industrial and Production management have a long history and their development began in the early years of technological prosperity. Industrial and Production management are emerging spontaneously from the need for personnel management and at the request of Human Resources.
The discipline Industrial Management
The discipline Industrial Management is the study of the structure, logical organization, methods, and means of researching and solving problems of manufacturing enterprises.
The main purpose of this methodological knowledge is the internal organization and regulation of the process of knowledge about management and the practical application of this knowledge in industrial enterprises (industrial companies).
Scientific management
The beginning of scientific management theory is the date of May 26, 1886, when the president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Henry Type, gave a detailed speech about the role of the engineer in economics. In his presentation, the author substantiates the need to consider management as an independent scientific discipline and makes the first attempt to outline its contours. Later, American researcher Frederick Winslow Taylor, an education engineer, further developed the ideas of Taipei and thus laid the foundations of the first scientific management school.
Manufacturing management
Manufacturing management emerged as an independent discipline in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Scientists writing at the time, specifically dealing with the fields of production management, clearly distinguished it from industrial design or operations research. Authors such as Edward Bauman and Robert Feter clearly outlined the common problems faced by all production systems and emphasized the importance of considering production operations as a system.
In addition, they recommended the use of simulation methods and linear programming, which have become standard topics in the field today. In 1973, Case and Aquilano emphasized the need to return management back to production and offered a life-cycle option as a means of organizing discipline. Reference: Trends in Modern Management.
The Russian researcher Gvishiani looks at three approaches to systematizing evolution in management thought and forming science schools:
Classical (traditional) approach in which the main element, the people involved in the production are treated as lazy, ignorant and therefore need precise instructions and instructions on what and how to do it. Administrative methods and coercion are at the root of workforce motivation.
An approach to human relations
An approach to human relations, in which the basis of management is the person with his / her ambition to develop and develop his / her creative potential. The role of the manager is to take into account the human characteristics and create conditions and prerequisites for the realization of these creative opportunities and potential.
A third approach integrating the positives of the previous two. In Japan, by building a new Z theory of management, a successful attempt has been made to integrate the positive sides of the two major theories (called by them X and Y) and eliminate the negative ones.
The classic approach and early stages of manufacturing
The classic approach and the Taylor Science School formed on this basis were created in the early stages of manufacturing, when both technology and technology are new and place higher demands on the intellectual and professional qualifications of workers and managers at all levels of management.
The human relations approach emerged in the United States in the wake of the rapid upsurge in industrial production and the social drive to democratize society (1930-1950).
In 1988, American researchers Michael Mexon, Michael Albert and Franklin Hedwory systematized the development of scientific thought in management, distinguishing four basic approaches:
Traditional (classical) approach
The scientific management and industrial engineering founder of this school is F. Taylor. For the first time in his work he outlines the basic principles of management:
- High degree of product typing (eg one model car T in black)
- High degree of mechanization of production (production flow)
- Special selection for the suitability of the respective work of the workers and the selection of the best ones for a particular job
- High pay for good performance and high-quality work
- Prohibition of union activity in factories
The stream production it introduced dramatically increases labor productivity and reduces the cost of controlling workers.
Production management and Scientific management
Although production management has existed since people began to take part in manufacturing, the creation of scientific management in the early twentieth century is probably the most important historic moment in this area. This concept was developed by Frederick Taylor, an imaginative engineer and astute observer of organizational activities.
The essence of Taylor’s philosophy is that scientific laws can control how much a worker can produce in a day, and that management’s function is to detect and apply those laws in managing the production systems/function of the worker. to fulfill the wishes of the management without objection. Taylor’s philosophy was not welcomed by his contemporaries.
Some unions refused or were afraid of scientific management
On the contrary, some unions refused or were afraid of scientific management, and with some right. In too many cases, leaders from that period were too quick to adopt Taylor’s time-study mechanisms, promotion plans, etc., but ignored their responsibility to organize and standardize the work that was to be done.
Consequently, there have been many cases of pay cuts/pay cuts for producing one product, the production rate was considered too high /, workload overload, and poorly designed working methods. Such violations led to a backlash, which in turn led to the introduction of a 1913 Congressional law banning the use of weather research and incentive plans in federal government structures.
Legislation unions claimed that, in some of his time experiments, the subject of Taylor’s investigation, a steelmaker named Schmidt, died from an overload as a result of using Taylor’s methods / as evidence they distributed a photograph of Schmitt’s grave. It was later discovered that Schmidt (whose real name was Henry Hall) was actually alive and well and working as a truck driver. Subsequently, the law was repealed.
The Japanese approach to management
Taylor’s ideas are widely accepted in contemporary Japan, and the Japanese translation of his book Principles of Scientific Management has been sold in over 2 million copies. So far, the strong legacy of Taylorism in Japanese approaches to management still exists.
Well-known contributors to Taylor were Frank and Lillian Gilbert (motion studies, industrial psychology) and Henry Gantt (planning). However little is known, Taylor, an outspoken conservative, has come to swear lessons in order to communicate with the workers that Frank Gilbert defeated the younger racing champion, fulfilling his principles of traffic economy, or that Gantt won a presidential diploma for the implementation of the Gantt chart in shipbuilding during World War I.
Moving assembly line
The year 1913 was the year of the introduction of one of Ford’s largest technological innovations, the moving production line for Ford cars. Prior to the introduction and, in August of the same year, each car was assembled by one worker for about 12 and a half hours. Eight months later, when the assembly line was in the final version, each worker performed a small part of the work and the car moved mechanically, the average time taken to assemble a car was 93 minutes. This technological breakthrough, along with the concepts of scientific management, represent the classic application of labor specialization and is still widely used today.
Administrative approach The founder of this school is the French researcher Henri Fayol. For the first time in his work, Fayol, in management theory, outlines the functions of management and recommends them as binding on industrial organizations:
- Technical function
- Commercial function
- Financial function
- Security feature
- Administrative function
Particular attention is paid to the administration function by breaking it into the following sub-functions:
- Estimation and planning
- Organization
- Management
- Coordination
- Control
Bureaucratic Approach in Management
The founder of this approach and school is German economist and sociologist Max Weber. Weber affirms the need for increased red tape and power as a prerequisite for order and productivity by:
- Specialization and division of labor
- Strict hierarchical structure of the organization
- Management of employees through technical rules and regulations
- Documentation management
This approach has been developed in the centralized planning economies of the countries of the socialist system.
The psychological approach underpinning this approach is the idea of a good workplace to place a suitable good worker, ie. the topic of the right selection of personnel in the organization. Another focus of this school is research on the importance of working conditions and ergonomic requirements. A representative of this line, Maire, points out the impact of lighting, heating, sound, coloring as working conditions on job satisfaction and ultimately on productivity.
Hawthorne Research
Mathematical and statistical methods have dominated the evolution of production management from Taylor’s time to the 1940s. An exception to this is the research at Hawthorne, conducted in the 1930s by a research team at Harvard Business Administration and led by sociologist Elton Mayo.
These experiments were designed to investigate the effects of certain environmental changes on workers’ productivity at a Western Electric plant in Hawthorne, Illinois. The unexpected revelations, published in the publication Management and Worker (1939) by F. Rotlisberger and W. Dickson, have intrigued the sociologists and followers of traditional scientific management. To the researchers’ surprise, a change in light level, for example, had a much smaller effect on production than the way changes were imposed on workers.
That is, a decrease in illumination in some cases led to an increase in production because workers felt an obligation to their group to maintain a high level of productivity. Such discoveries made a huge difference in the design of work and motivation and subsequently led to the creation of HR and human relations departments in most organizations.