Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century - Implementation of Early Scientific Management

Table of Contents

Introduction        

Organizing for Production        

Domestic System        

Putting-out System        

Factory System        

Early Managerial Practices and Concepts        

Contributors of Early Managerial Practices and Concepts:        

Sir James Steuart        

Adam Smith:        

Richard Arkwright        

A Transition Phase        

William Cooke Taylor        

Introduction to a history of the factory system        

Paul Mantoux        

Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century        

Implementation of Early Scientific Management        

Soho Foundry        

New Lanark        

Interchangeable parts:        

The beginning of the American System:        

Introduction

From the very beginning of the history managerial practices prevail in every society. The 1700s were ripe for the introduction of an improvement in manufacturing techniques and the development of a new approach to management. The industrial revolution brought with it a breakdown in the provincialism of management concepts, and with these broadened horizons, managers began to look for ways to improve both manufacturing and management. Two prime examples of this new approach to management are found in Boulton and Watt’s Soho Foundry and Robert Owen,s New Lanark Mill. Here was the embodiment of all the new concepts of the time. And most important-the ideas were sound, the companies were successful, and profits accrued. With this genesis of bold ideas, it is no wonder that even greater strides were taken by subsequent leaders and writers who applied their own incentive genius to move from these early attempts into an era presaging the advent of true scientific management. One of the first complete applications of scientific management to manufacturing occurred in Great Britain at the Soho Engineering Foundry of Boulton, Watt, and company in 1800.

Organizing for Production

The period between 1700 and 1785 spotlights the English industrial revolution during which a new generation of managers developed with their own concepts and techniques emerging on every hand. It was during this short span of years that England changed dramatically from a nation of rural yeomanry to the workshop of the world-the first nation to successfully make the transition from a rural-agrarian to an industrial-commercial society. Probably the most important innovations during this period were the changes in the basic organization of production. Although gradual and overlapping to a great extent, these changes can best be considered chronologically and in order of the impact which each new stage had on the whole.