Frederick Winslow Taylor was an American mechanical engineer who improved industrial efficiency. Taylor is regarded as the father of scientific management and as a one of the first management consultants. He was one of the intellectual leaders of the Efficiency Movement and his ideas, broadly conceived, were highly influential in the Progressive Era. Frederick W. Taylor was the first man in recorded history who thought that management deserve systematic observation and study.

In general sense, technical and diagnostic skills are especially important when practicing the science of management. All said and done still science of management is not the kind of science where you mix two parts of Hydrogen and one part Oxygen and you get water, but it is the kind of science where you adapt and adjust management techniques according to circumstances and different scenarios.

Even though managers may try to be scientific as much as possible, they must often make decisions and solve problems on the basis of intuition, experience, instinct, personal insights and on compassionate grounds. Relying heavily on conceptual and interpersonal skills.

Taylor's Biography (from Wikipedia)

Taylor was born in 1856 to a wealthy Quaker family in Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Taylor's father, Franklin Taylor, a Princeton-educated lawyer, built his wealth on mortgages. Taylor's mother, Emily Annette Taylor (née Winslow), was an ardent abolitionist and a coworker with Lucretia Mott.

His father's ancestor, Samuel Taylor, settled in Burlington, New Jersey, in 1677. His mother's ancestor, Edward Winslow, was one of the fifteen original Mayflower Pilgrims who brought servants or children, and one of eight who had the honorable distinction of Mister. Winslow served for many years as the Governor of the Plymouth colony. Read more.

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