Henry Laurence Gantt, A.B., M.E. was an American mechanical engineer and
management consultant who is best known for developing 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 programme
management. Biography
Gantt was born in Calvert County, Maryland. He graduated from McDonogh
School in 1878 and from Johns Hopkins University in 1880, then returned to the
McDonogh School to teach for three years. He subsequently received a
Masters of Engineering degree in mechanical engineering from the Stevens
Institute of Technology in New Jersey. In 1884 he began working as a
draughtsman at the iron foundry and machine-shop Poole & Hunt in Baltimore.
In 1887 he joined Frederick W. Taylor in applying scientific management
principles to the work at Midvale Steel and Bethlehem Steel, working there with
Taylor until 1893. In his later career as a management consultant and following
the invention of the Gantt chart, he designed the 'task and bonus' system of
wage payment and additional measurement methods worker efficiency and
productivity. In 1916, influenced by Thorsten Veblen
he 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 discuss
Gantt's call for socialising 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 awards an annual medal in honor of Henry
Laurence Gantt. = Lineage=
The Gantt family claim descent from Gilbert de Gantt, son of Baldwin, Earl
of Flanders, who accompanied William the Conqueror to England in 1066, and
participated in the Battle of Hastings. |Gilbert de Gantt was actually a nephew
to Baldwin IV, Count of Flanders, who was married to Ogive of Luxembourg,
Gilbert de Gant's mother's sister. Thomas Gantt emigrated to Maryland in
1660 and settled on "Myrtle Range". Henry Gantt was married to Mary E. Snow
of Fitchburg, Massachusetts on 29 Nov 1899. The motto on the Gantt family
crest is "Dum Spiro, Coelestia Spero" - While I have breath, I hope heavenly
things Work
Henry Gantt's legacy to project management is the following:
The Gantt chart: Still accepted as an important management tool today, it
provides a graphic schedule for the planning and controlling of work, and
recording progress towards stages of a project. The chart has a modern
variation, Program Evaluation and Review Technique.
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.
Gantt describes two types of balances: the "man’s record", which shows what
each worker should do and did do, and the "daily balance of work", which shows
the amount of work to be done and the amount that is done.
Gantt gives an example with orders that will require many days to complete. The
daily balance has rows for each day and columns for each part or each operation.
At the top of each column is the amount needed. The amount entered in the
appropriate cell is the number of parts done each day and the cumulative total
for that part. Heavy horizontal lines indicate the starting date and the date
that the order should be done. According to Gantt, the graphical daily balance is
"a method of scheduling and recording work". In this 1903 article, Gantt also
describes the use of: "production cards" for assigning work to
each operator and recording how much was done each day.
= Work, Wages, and Profits, 1916= In his 1916 book "Work, Wages, and
Profits" Gantt explicitly discusses scheduling, especially in the job shop
environment. He proposes giving to the foreman each day an "order of work" that
is an ordered list of jobs to be done that day. Moreover, he discusses the
need to coordinate activities to avoid "interferences". However, he also warns
that the most elegant schedules created by planning offices are useless if they
are ignored, a situation that he observed.
= Organizing for Work, 1919= In his 1919 book "Organizing for Work"
Gantt gives two principles for his charts:
one, measure activities by the amount of time needed to complete them;
two, the space on the chart can be used to represent the amount of the activity
that should have been done in that time. Gantt shows a progress chart that
indicates for each month of the year, using a thin horizontal line, the number
of items produced during that month. In addition, a thick horizontal line
indicates the number of items produced during the year. Each row in the chart
corresponds to an order for parts from a specific contractor, and each row
indicates the starting month and ending month of the deliveries. It is the
closest thing to the Gantt charts typically used today in scheduling
systems, though it is at a higher level than machine scheduling.
Gantt’s machine record chart and man record chart are quite similar, though
they show both the actual working time for each day and the cumulative working
time for a week. Each row of the chart corresponds to an individual machine or
operator. These charts do not indicate which tasks were to be done, however.
= Henry Gantt and Karol Adamiecki= A novel method of displaying
interdependencies of processes to increase visibility of production
schedules was invented in 1896 by Karol Adamiecki, which was similar to the one
defined by Gantt in 1903. However, Adamiecki did not publish his works in a
language popular in the West; hence Gantt was able to popularize a similar
method, which he developed around the years 1910–1915, and the solution became
attributed to Gantt. With minor modifications, what originated as the
Adamiecki's chart is now more commonly referred to as the Gantt Chart.
Publications Gantt published several articles and
books. A selection: Henry L. Gantt, Dabney Herndon Maury
"The Efficiency of Fluid in Vapor Engines," in: Van Nostrand's engineering
magazine, v. 31 July-Dec 1884. p. 413-433
H. L. Gantt. "A Bonus System of Rewarding Labor," in: Transactions of
the ASME 23:341-72. Henry L. Gantt "A graphical daily
balance in manufacture," in: Transactions of the American. Society of
Mechanical Engineers, 24:1322-1336 Henry L. Gantt Training Workmen in
Habits of Industry and Coöperation. 12 pages.
Henry L. Gantt The Compensation of Workmen ...: A Lecture Delivered Before
the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, Dec. 15, 1910. 116
pages. Henry L. Gantt, Work, Wages, and
Profits: Their Influence on the Cost of Living, New York, New York, USA:
Engineering Magazine Company, LCCN 10014590.
Gantt, Henry L., Industrial leadership, New Haven: Yale University Press.
Gantt, Henry L., Organizing for Work, New York, New York, USA: Harcourt,
Brace, and Howe, LCCN 19014919Reprinted by Hive Publishing Company, Easton,
Maryland, 1973. References
External links ASME - Henry Laurence Gantt Medal
International Institute of Management - Management Hall of Fame: Leading
Management Gurus Gantt.com - Gantt Chart History
Gantt Chart - Henry Gantt's legacy to Management is the Gantt Chart
British Library - Management & Business Studies Portal