Henry Laurence Gantt (; May 20, 1861 – November 23, 1919) was an American mechanical engineer and management consultant who is best known for his work in the development of scientific management. He created the Gantt chart in the 1910s.
Gantt charts were employed on major infrastructure projects including the Hoover Dam and Interstate highway system and continue to be an important tool in project management and program management.
Gantt is also recognized as an early proponent of the social responsibility of businesses.
Biography
Early life, education and family
Gantt was born to a prosperous plantation family in Calvert County, Maryland at the outbreak of the American Civil War. When the war ended the family lost their slaves and land, and moved to Baltimore.
He graduated from McDonogh School in 1878 and from Johns Hopkins University in 1880, and then returned to the McDonogh School to teach for three years. He subsequently received a Master of Engineering degree in mechanical engineering from the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. Henry Gantt married Mary E. Snow of Fitchburg, Massachusetts on 29 Nov 1899.
Career
In 1884, Gantt began working as a draughtsman at the iron foundry and machine-shop Poole & Hunt in Baltimore. In 1887 he joined Frederick W. Taylor, initially as an assistant. Here he began applying scientific management principles to the work at Midvale Steel and Bethlehem Steel, working there with Taylor until 1893. They jointly received six patents and he followed Taylor to Simonds Rolling Company before they went to Bethlehem Steel for a consulting project. In 1908-09, he undertook projects at Joseph Bancroft & Sons Company and Williams & Wilkins. He credited Taylor with being the first to study every element of the labor problem and has been referred to as one of the most influential of Taylor's associates. In 1911, Gantt along with Taylor followers Frank Gilbreth and Carl Barth founded The Society to Promote the Science of Management, later known as the Taylor Society, to promote Taylor's methods and philosophy in industry. From 1902 to 1919 Gantt worked as a private consultant to industry on efficiency improvement and was active in promoting scientific management, as Taylor's general approach came to be called. In his later career as an industrial consultant, following the invention of the Gantt chart, he designed the 'task and bonus' system of wage payment and additional measurement methods for worker efficiency and productivity.
In 1916, influenced by Thorsten Veblen Gantt set up the New Machine, an association which sought to apply the criteria of industrial efficiency to the political process. With the Marxist Walter Polakov he led a breakaway from the 1916 ASME conference to call for socializing industrial production under the control of managers incorporating Polakov's analysis of inefficiency in the industrial context.
Henry Gantt is listed under Stevens Institute of Technology alumni. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) published his biography in 1934 and awards an annual medal in honor of Henry Laurence Gantt.
Work
Henry Gantt's legacy to project management is the following: The Gantt chart: Still accepted as an important management tool today, the Gantt chart is a graphical format that is used for the planning, scheduling, and controlling of work, including recording the progress of a project and its stages. The chart has a modern variation, Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT). Industrial Efficiency: Industrial efficiency can only be produced by the application of scientific analysis to all aspects of the work in progress. The industrial management role is to improve the system by eliminating chance and accidents. The Task And Bonus System: He linked the bonus paid to managers to how well they taught their employees to improve performance. The social responsibility of business: He believed that businesses have obligations to the welfare of the society in which they operate.
Gantt charts
Gantt created many different types of charts. He designed his charts so that foremen or other supervisors could quickly know whether production was on schedule, ahead of schedule, or behind schedule. Modern project management software includes this critical function.
