Henry Gantt

Henry Laurence Gantt (20 May 1861 – 23 November 1919) was an American mechanical engineer and management consultant, known as assistant of Frederick Winslow Taylor, proponent of Scientific management, and developer of the Gantt chart in the 1910s.

• The greatest problem before engineers and managers today is the economical utilization of labor. The limiting of output by the workman, and the limiting by the employer of the amount a workman is allowed to earn, are both factors which militate against that harmonious co-operation of employer and employee which is essential to their highest common good.
  • H.L. Gantt (1904) paper presented before the International Congress of Arts and Sciences at the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition, St. Louis, 1904. Published in: H.L. Gantt (1910) Work, Wages, and Profits: Their Influence on the Cost of Living. 1910.

• The aim of our efficiency has not been to produce goods, but to harvest dollars... The production of goods was always secondary to the securing of dollars.
  • H.L. Gantt cited in: Walter N. Polakov (1922) "The measurement of human work" in: Wallace Clark (1922) The Gantt chart, a working tool of management. New York, Ronald Press. Preface. p. 152.

• Finance and industry must be socialized somehow. If we refuse to do it from the bottom we shall have to do it from the top, and doing it from the top means the emergence of many Prussias — with wars upon wars.
  • Henry Gantt cited in: Leon Pratt Alford (1934) Henry Laurence Gantt, leader in industry. p. 265. Highlighted section quoted in: Henry Mintzberg (1994) The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning. p. 169.

Henry L. Gantt (1910) Work, Wages, and Profits: Their Influence on the Cost of Living, New York, New York, USA: Engineering Magazine Company, LCCN 10014590.

• The mechanical engineer today is carrying forward, under the direction of science, the work that was begun by the mechanic who first learned to chip flint or make a fire ; and it is he alone that can lead the mechanic of today to a better understanding of his problems, and the capitalist to a better appreciation of their solution.
  • p. 5.

• Scientific investigation is rapidly putting at our disposal vast amounts of knowledge concerning materials and forces, which it is the business of the engineer to utilize for the benefit of the community. Well-designed plants and efficiency labor-saving devices, to be seen on every hand, bear testimony that he is doing at least a portion of his work well. When, however, it comes to the operation of these plants and the utilization of these labor-saving devices, the lack of co-operation between employer and employee, and the inefficient utilization of labor, very much impair their efficiency. The increase of this efficiency is essentially the problem of the manager, and the amount to which it can be increased by proper study is, in most cases, so great as to be almost incredible.
  • p. 13-14.

• "Whatever we do must be in accord with human nature. We cannot drive people; we must direct their development... The general policy of the past has been to drive, but the era of force must give way to that of knowledge, and the policy of the future will be to teach and to lead, to the advantage of all concerned"
  • Gantt (1910) Work, Wages, and Profits: Their Influence on the Cost of Living, p. 116. cited in: Daniel A. Wren (1994) The evolution of management thought. p. 137.

Henry L. Gantt (1916), Industrial leadership, New Haven: Yale University Press.

• There is another and higher leadership, that of the intellect, by which the methods and thoughts of one man may affect the whole civilized world. Industrial leaders who have most prominently attracted our attention in the past are those who have, by their inventions or their direction of activities, accumulated large fortunes ; but none of these are as great as the man who by the force of his intellect leads people throughout the civilized world to benefit themselves and others. Such a man was the late Frederick Winslow Taylor who, in his determination to eliminate error and to base our industrial relations on fact, set an example which will have an effect all over the world
  • p. 27. Highlighted section quoted in: A. Johansson (1986) "The Labour Movement and the Emergence of Taylorism". in: Economic and Industrial Democracy November 1986 vol. 7 no. 4 pp.449-485.

• Taylor’s friend Henry Gantt explains to his fellow engineers in the middle of the First World War that they must "develop a task system on the basis of democracy that will yield as good, or better, results than those now in operation under autocracy"
  • p. 53 as cited in: Thibault Le Texier (2011) "Management Is By Nature Knowledge Management: Taylor, Scientific Management and the Early Organization of Knowledge".

• It is becoming perfectly clear that the principles underlying industrial and military efficiency are the same and that a nation, to be efficient in a military sense, must first be efficient industrially
  • p. 936) cited in: P.B. Petersen (1986) "Correspondence from Henry L. Gantt to an old friend reveals new information about Gantt". In: Journal of Management Fall 1986 vol. 12 no. 3 pp. 339-350.

Henry L. Gantt (1919), Organizing for Work, New York, New York, USA: Harcourt, Brace, and Howe, LCCN 19014919.

• Engineers were the only members of the community "who understand the needs of the nation, desires of the workmen, and the power of the productive forces"
  • p. 332 as cited in: J.T. Knoedler (1997) "Veblen and technical efficiency". In: Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Dec., 1997), pp. 1011-1026.

• For more than twenty years Mr. Gantt has been closely interested in advanced work in the field of labor management. For more than ten years his name has been identified with certain methods which, nevertheless, are yet but partially and imperfectly understood by many, and because of this incomplete understanding are sometimes supposed to be summed up in the "Bonus System" of wage payment.
  • Editor of Work, Wages, and Profits: Their Influence on the Cost of Living (1910) in Preface.

• The achievement of Gantt offers a means of measuring the human or social efficiency of industry... Gantt's method has made it possible to ascertain the cause of the diseased industry just as blood analysis established the cause of malaria. While the latter made the completion of the Panama Canal possible, the former will transform industry from servitude into creative service and its pensioners into respectable members of the community...
  Unlike statistical diagrams, curve records, and similar static forms of presenting facts of the past (Gantt) charts... are kinetic, moving, and project through time the integral elements of service rendered in the past toward the goal in the future.
  • Walter N. Polakovrin (1920) "Principles of Industrial Philosophy," presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, December, 1920; cited in: Wallace Clark 1922) The Gantt chart, a working tool of management. New York, Ronald Press. Preface. p. 21.

• Mr. Gantt concentrated his attention on the development of a method of charting which would show a comparison between performance and promises... he had used a chart on which the work for machines was "laid out" according to the time required to do it. The Gantt Progress Chart, as developed from this early form, was found to help in the making of definite plans and to be highly effective in getting those plans executed. The rate at which the work goes forward is continuously compared with the advance of time, which induces action to accelerate or retard that rate. These charts are not static records of the past - they deal with the present and future and their only connection with the past is with respect to its effect upon the future.
  • Wallace Clark (1922) The Gantt chart, a working tool of management. New York, Ronald Press. Preface.

• For continuous flow production such as this I know of nothing better for recording output and comparing performance with capacity or what ought to be produced, than the straight line charts developed by Mr. H. L. Gantt, which show required and actual production in terms of both quantity and time. Their use, however, is not limited to the class of work just described.
  • H.K. Hathaway, industrial engineer cited in: Wallace Clark (1922) The Gantt chart, a working tool of management. New York, Ronald Press. Preface. p. 18.

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