Taylor and Toyota – two ways of measuring a human being

The previous episode ended on a question: who sets the pace of work?

This is the story of two answers to it. They sit a century and an ocean apart, they are treated as opposites – and they have more in common than either camp likes to admit.

Taylor and the stopwatch

Frederick Winslow Taylor published The Principles of Scientific Management in 1911. The idea was that work is not a craft each worker shapes for themselves, but a problem that can be measured and solved.

The method, in four steps

1. Break the task downDivide the work into individual motions that can be observed separately.
2. Time every motionWith a stopwatch, repeatedly, across several workers.
3. Find the one best wayAssemble the fastest motions into a single prescribed method.
4. Teach it, and require itThe worker no longer finds their own way. The method is decided somewhere else.

The story of Schmidt

Scientific management has one founding story, and anyone who has taken a management course has heard it.

At Bethlehem Steel, around the turn of the century, workers were loading an average of 12.5 tonnes of pig iron per man per day, for wages of $1.15. Taylor describes how he picked out one worker – he calls him Schmidt – and through careful instruction got him up to 47 tonnes a day.

The story is still used as proof of what the method can achieve.

When somebody checked it

This is where it gets interesting, and this part is missing from most accounts.

When researchers went back to the sources, the founding story turned out to be partly fabricated.

The man existed: "Schmidt" was in reality Henry Noll.
But the account did not hold: it is described as fictionalised and error-riddled.
And something had been removed: when Taylor retold the episode in his congressional testimony, the revolt among the pig-iron handlers and the mass dismissals that preceded it had disappeared from the narrative.
The scale was smaller too: the reorganisation at Bethlehem is described in hindsight as a modest affair, far less dramatic than either Taylor or his critics later made it.

This is worth dwelling on, because it is rare for so central an idea to rest so heavily on a single anecdote. Scientific management was not built on a dataset. It was built on a story about one man, told by the man selling the method.

That does not mean everything Taylor said was wrong. That work can be measured, and that measurement reveals waste, holds up. But it is worth knowing that the example which convinced a whole generation of managers does not survive source criticism.

The resistance

Taylorism met hard resistance, and not only in theory. At Watertown Arsenal its introduction led to a strike, and it ended in congressional hearings. The method was eventually banned in United States government arsenals.

The reason for the resistance was not that people were against efficiency. It was the stopwatch itself: being stood over and timed, by a stranger, while you work.

Toyota, and the opposite premise

Half a century later, in Japan, a system is built that measures work just as precisely – but inverts one premise.

Who holds the improvement

Taylor

The worker is the object

• The planners decide the method
• The worker carries it out
• Deviation is an error
• The knowledge sits in the staff function

Toyota

The worker is the source

• The standard is the starting point, not the answer
• Whoever does the job proposes the change
• Surfacing a problem is wanted
• The knowledge sits at the machine

The andon cord

The clearest expression of that is a cord above the line.

Any worker can stop the entire production line.

What it means in practice: see a problem, pull. The line halts, and people come to look at it with you.
Why it is radical: at Ford, stopping the line was the most expensive thing a human being could do. Here it is a duty.
The logic behind it: a fault allowed to pass gets more expensive at every station it passes. Stopping now is cheaper than repairing later.
And what makes it a management device: it is a statement of trust that is also an instrument of measurement. Every time somebody pulls, management knows exactly where the problem sits.

How extreme it actually is

Here it is worth being honest, because TPS is often presented as the humane alternative to the line. The system is humane in some ways and rock-hard in others.

What makes TPS demanding to work in

Feature	What it involves
Takt time	Work is divided into cycles of seconds, set by customer demand – not by what is comfortable.
Standardised work	Every motion is described and the sequence fixed. It is more detailed than Taylor ever got.
Little slack	Inventory is removed deliberately. With the buffers gone, a problem propagates immediately.
Kaizen	Improvement is continuous. Today's standard is next week's starting point.
Visibility	Everything is meant to be visible: status, deviations, delays. Yours included.

The criticism

The sharpest objection to TPS is not that it is inhumane. It is more uncomfortable than that.

"Management by stress", as the criticism describes it

1. 1Remove the slackInventory, buffers and spare staffing are taken away.
2. 2Problems become visibleWithout a buffer the line stops where it fails. That is the intention.
3. 3The problem gets solvedThe system genuinely improves. This part is real.
4. 4Then it is tightened againThe gain is taken out as new, lower slack.
5. 5And the pressure is backAt a higher level of performance, with the same felt strain.

The uncomfortable kinship

Both systems measure work down to seconds, and both standardise every motion.

What actually separates them: who owns the standard, and what happens when somebody finds a better way.
For Taylor: the standard comes from above and is to be followed.
For Toyota: the standard is a hypothesis, and whoever does the job is expected to improve it.
Why the difference is real: a system where you can change your own method is a different thing to live in than one where you cannot.
But also why it is fragile: introduce the tools without the authority – the stopwatch without the cord – and you have Taylorism with Japanese vocabulary.

That last point is the most practical lesson in the episode. Lean rollouts that fail usually do not fail on the tools. They fail because the right to improve was never handed over.

What is worth taking with you

That Taylorism’s founding story about Schmidt and the pig iron does not survive source criticism, and that Taylor himself edited out the revolt and the dismissals when he retold it.

That resistance to the stopwatch was strong enough to trigger a strike and congressional hearings.

That Toyota measures just as closely, but inverts the premise: the worker is the source of improvement, not its object.

That the andon cord is both a statement of trust and an instrument of measurement.

That TPS is a system with no resting point built in, and that this is deliberate.

And that the difference between the two lies not in the tools, but in who owns the standard.

The account of Taylor’s method draws on his own 1911 book. The source criticism of the Schmidt story draws on later reviews of the Bethlehem Steel archive material. The lean toolkit is covered in more detail in its own episode.

Main topics

• Taylor, the stopwatch and the one best way
• The story of Schmidt and the pig iron
• What happened when somebody actually checked it
• Watertown, the strike and the hearings
• Toyota, and the opposite premise
• The andon cord and the right to stop everything
• How extreme TPS actually is
• The criticism – management by stress

Questions this episode answers

• What is scientific management?
• Who was Schmidt, and what did he do?
• Were Taylor's figures real?
• What is the Toyota Production System?
• What is an andon cord?
• What is the difference between Taylor and Toyota?
• Is lean just a kinder form of Taylorism?

Key points

• Taylor measured work with a stopwatch and determined the one best way to do it.
• The story of Schmidt going from 12.5 to 47 tonnes of pig iron is the founding tale of scientific management.
• When researchers went back to the sources, the story turned out to be partly fabricated.
• Taylor removed the revolt and the mass dismissals when he retold the episode to Congress.
• Toyota inverts the premise: the worker is the source of improvement, not its object.
• The andon cord gives every individual the right to stop the whole line.
• Both systems measure work down to seconds. The difference is who holds the watch.

Sources and references

• Frederick Winslow Taylor – The Principles of Scientific Management (1911)
• Wikipedia – Schmidt (worker), on Henry Noll and the source criticism of Taylor's account
• Taylorism and the Workers at Bethlehem Steel, 1898–1901 (Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography)
• James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones and Daniel Roos – The Machine That Changed the World (1990)