Henry Gant (history, biography, activities of the researcher are described below) is the author of the chart of the same name in management. Today it has become a project management tool, in the 1920s it was a worldwide innovation. But Gant's legacy was not just that. He became the first ideologue of the social responsibility of business and the forerunner of the school of human relations. This article will describe his brief biography and main ideas.
Life and career
Henry Gant was born in Maryland in 1861. The boy's parents were we althy farmers. Henry's childhood years fell on the Civil War, which significantly affected family well-being. The Gants lived in constant hardship. After graduating from the Johns Hopkins Institute, Henry worked as a teacher. In 1884, the young man trained as a mechanical engineer and got a job as a designer.
In 1887, Henry Gant became assistant engineer F. Taylor inMidvale Steel Company. Then the young man headed the foundry. At first, Taylor and Gant cooperated very fruitfully, so in the future, Henry moved to the boss, first at Simonds Rolling Company, and then at Bethleheim Steel.
Fame came to the explorer in 1900. Gant became a successful consultant, specializing in various aspects of management, some of which were highly controversial. And since 1917, Henry joined the government commission. As part of it, he advised such military factories as the Emergence Fleet Corporation and the Frankford Arsenal. The explorer died in 1919.
Key Ideas
Gant Henry is known to many people as a student of Taylor and promoter of the school of scientific management. At the beginning of their cooperation, the young man de alt with the technical problems of management. The researcher was convinced that only the use of scientific analysis in relation to every aspect of the labor process would ensure the efficiency of production. Henry's overall contribution to management can be expressed in four terms.
1. Job remuneration
In 1901, Gant introduced his system of bonus pay. He developed it on the basis of Taylor's piecework concept. The latter included a series of fines for those who failed to comply with the plan.
Gant Henry modified this concept. According to his system, when implementing the daily plan, the employee received a bonus in addition to the regular salary. If the required amount of work was not performed, then only the salary was saved. This isreally motivated employees to earn more and increased labor efficiency many times over.
The result of applying this concept was a doubling of production figures. Henry also found out that a very important aspect of management is an interest in employees and their morale.
2. Work Perspective
Gant continued his research and improved the concept based on the results. So, for work done on time (or faster), he set a time wage plus a percentage for the time saved. For example, when a two-hour task was completed on time, an employee received a three-hour salary.
3. Chart
It has become an effective tool for recording the implementation of the plan by the workers. Every employee was accounted for on a daily basis. If the plan was carried out, a black line was used, otherwise, a red one. In 1917, Henry Gant was faced with the problem of coordinating various tasks in the implementation of government orders by military factories. After doing some research, he realized that the plan should be focused not on time, but on quantitative indicators.
As a result, the researcher came up with a chart showing the distribution of work by period. Thus, the authorities have a means of planning activities with an indication of the deadlines for the implementation of each of its stages.
Gantt charts have been used in various projects to show the process of completing a task. As an example, let's take a small plan for the renovation of an office space. This process is divided into a number of stages:
- Define the range of quality standards and responsibilities, time and cost.
- Informing customers and staff.
- Moving to another room.
- Preparing the office.
- Repairing.
For each stage, time periods are prescribed, which are displayed on the diagram. Thus, it turns into an excellent graphical tool for monitoring and planning production work.
4. Corporate Social Responsibility
After Taylor's death, the researcher completely moved away from the key ideas of scientific management and focused on the role of the firm itself. Also, Henry Gant, whose biography is known to many business leaders, studied the function of leadership. Over time, the researcher became convinced that management imposes enormous obligations to society, and a profitable company must make a certain contribution to its well-being.
Modern look
Henry Gant, whose brief biography is presented above, was a social activist and a prolific writer. He is the author of many articles for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. One of them (“Educating Workers in the Skills of Cooperation and Industrial Labor”) was a rare insight into the problems of human relations that arise during management.
Gant believed that the leader should be perceived as his teacher. Thanks to this position, Henry was ranked among the supporters of the behavioral school, putting him on a par with Mayo and Owen. The idea of responsibilityfirms in front of society made Gantt the first adherent of the concept of socially responsible business. But he went down in history primarily as the author of the chart of the same name.
Shortly before Gant's death, Henry began to view the firm's activities in a broader political and governmental context. And the researcher's theories began to be criticized and accused of being vague. Probably at that time Gant was torn between two ideas: the socialist order and services for an appropriate reward.
Henry never profited from his innovation. The explorer's books contain diagrams showing "work in progress" rather than the design diagrams we know today. True, he received the Distinguished Service Medal from the government. Well, the very idea of the chart was popularized by Wallis Clark, who worked at the Gantt consulting company. The book he wrote was subsequently translated into eight languages.
