Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. (July 7, 1868 - June 14, 1924)

Biography:

He was an early advocate of scientific management and a pioneer of motion study, but is perhaps best known as the

father and central figure of Cheaper by the Dozen written by Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Jr.

Gilbreth was born in Fairfield, Maine to Joseph Hiram and Martha Gilbreth. In 1904, he married Lillian Evelyn Moller and fathered twelve children. He had no formal education

beyond high school. He began as a bricklayer, Later became a building contractor, an inventor, and ultimately into

management engineer.

Gilbreths were, primarily, scientists who sought to teach managers that all aspects of the workplace should be constantly questioned, and improvements constantly

adopted.

Gilbreth was the first to propose that a surgical nurse serve as a caddy (Gilbreth's term) to a surgeon, by handing

surgical instruments to the surgeon. Gilbreth also came up with the standard techniques used by armies around the

world to teach recruits how to rapidly disassemble and reassemble their weapons

He was posthumously honored with the Gantt Gold Medal in 1944 from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers

and the American Management Association.

Gilbreth died of heart failure on June 14, 1924, at age 55.

Ideology

Although the work of the Gilbreths is often associated with that of Frederick Winslow Taylor, there was an important philosophical difference between them. The symbol of Taylorism was the stopwatch; Taylor was primarily concerned with reducing process times. Whereas The Gilbreths sought to make processes more efficient by reducing the motions involved. They saw their approach as more concerned with workers' welfare than Taylorism, which workers themselves often perceived as primarily concerned with profit. This difference led to a personal rift between Taylor and the Gilbreths which, after Taylor's death, turned into a feud between the Gilbreths and Taylor's followers. After Frank's death, Lillian Gilbreth took steps to heal the rift (Price 1990); however, some friction remains over questions of history and intellectual property.

Opposed to Taylor, who held an antagonistic and patronizing view of the laborer of the day, both Gilbreths were more sympathetic to their concerns. Frank Gilbreth had belonged to a union and was disposed to consider that the cooperation of the worker was necessary if any scientific reorganization was to succeed. It is in large measure due to Lillian's influence and training that the Gilbreths' form of scientific management always had a more developed view of the worker, and his or her interests, than Taylor's simplistic view of a worker as driven solely by pay.