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Lillian Moller Gilbreth

  • Teaching -- training small groups, at universities

Market Research

Early Life and Education

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Gilbreth was born Lillie Evelyn Moller in Oakland,California. She was the second of ten children born to William Moller, a builder's supply merchant, and Annie Delger Moller, who were both of German descent. She was educated at home until she was nine years old, when her formal schooling began at a public elementary schoo, where she was required to start from the first grade (although she was rapidly promoted through the grades).[1] She attended Oakland High School, where she was elected vice president of her senior class; she graduated with exemplary grades in May 1896.[2]

Gilbreth started college at the University of California shortly after, commuting from her parents' Oakland home. She graduated in 1900 with a bachelor's degree in English literature and was the first female commencement speaker at the university.[3] She originally pursued her master's degree at Columbia University, where she was exposed to the subject of psychology through courses under Edward Thorndike.[4] However, she became ill and returned home, finishing her master's degree in literature at the University of California in 1902. Her thesis was entitled "[[Ben Jonson}Ben Jonson’s]] comedy of Bartholomew Fair; a study".

Gilbreth completed a dissertation and attempted to obtain a doctorate from the University of California in 1911, but was not awarded the degree due to noncompliance with residency requirements for doctoral candidates; this dissertation was later published as The Psychology of Management.[5] Instead, since her immediate family had relocated to New England by this time, she attended Brown University and earned a Ph.D in 1915, having written a second dissertation on efficient teaching methods called "Some Aspects of Eliminating Waste in Teaching".[6] It was the first degree granted in industrial psychology.

Work

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Lillian Gilbreth combined the perspectives of an engineer, a psychologist, a wife, and a mother; she helped industrial engineers see the importance of the psychological dimensions of work. She became the first American engineer ever to create a synthesis of psychology and scientific management.

Psychology in scientific management

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She and her husband were certain that the revolutionary ideas of Frederick Winslow Taylor, as Taylor formulated them, would be neither easy to implement nor sufficient; their implementation would require hard work by both engineers and psychologists to make them successful. Both Lillian and Frank Gilbreth believed that scientific management as formulated by Taylor fell short when it came to managing the human element on the shop floor.[7] The Gilbreths helped formulate a constructive critique of Taylorism; this critique had the support of other successful managers.[8] Macy's human relations.

Her work included the marketing research for Johnson & Johnson in 1926 and her efforts to improve women’s spending decisions during the first years of the Great Depression. She also helped companies such as Johnson & Johnson and Macys with their management departments. In 1926, when Johnson & Johnson hired Lillian as a consultant to do marketing research on sanitary napkins.[9] , the firm benefited in three ways. First, it could use her training as a psychologist in measuring and the analysis of attitudes and opinions. Second, it could give her the experience of an engineer who specializes in the interaction between bodies and material objects. Third, she would be a public image as a mother and a modern career woman to build consumer trust.[10]

Time, motion and fatigue study

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She and her husband were partners in the management consulting firm of Gilbreth, Inc., which performed time and motion studies. Additionally, the Gilbreths did research on fatigue study. the forerunner to ergonomics.

Domestic Management and Home Economics

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Their children often took part in the experiments. Kitchen design General Electric - "continuous" kitchen In addition to having twelve children, writing books, helping companies with their management skills, and managing women consumers, Lillian was instrumental in the design of a desk in 1933 (in cooperation with IBM) for display at the Chicago World’s Fair.[11]

  • Household design -- kitchens, appliances
    • Improving homemaker efficiency, such as through the design of kitchens and domestic environments. Her "continuous" kitchen design with linear workspaces is often used today in modern kitchen layouts.
    • Work-triangle

http://books.google.com/books?id=4o24y6mdfkgC&lpg=PA56&dq=continuous%20kitchen%20gilbreth&pg=PA56#v=onepage&q=continuous%20kitchen%20gilbreth&f=false Kitchen Efficiency -- World's Fair http://americanhistory.si.edu/ontime/saving/kitchen.html 1929 President Hoover's Organization on Unemployment Relief - Women's committee http://www.brownalumnimagazine.com/content/view/1528/40/

Rehabilitation of the physically handicapped

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Physically disabled started with the rehabilitation of World War I veterans.

Volunteer work and government service

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Her government work began as a result of her longtime friendship with Herbert Hoover and his wife Lou Henry Hoover, both of whom she had known in California. Gilbreth has presided over the Women's Branch of the Engineers' Hoover for President campaign.[12] At the behest of Lou Henry Hoover, Gilbreth joined the Girl Scouts as a consultant in 1929, later becoming a member of the board of directors, and remained active in the organization for more than twenty years.[13]

Under the Hoover administration, she worked became the head of the women's section of the President's Emergency Committee for Employment in 1930, where she worked to gain the cooperation of women's groups for reducing unemployment.[14] During World War II, she was an advisor to several governmental groups, providing expertise on education and labor (particularly women in the workforce) for organizations such as for the War Manpower Commission, the Office of War Information,[15] and the United States Navy.[16] In later years, she served on the Chemical Warfare Board and on Harry Truman's Civil Defense Advisory Council.[17] During the Korean War, she served on the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services.[18]

Teaching

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Gilbreth had always been interested in teaching and education; as an undergraduate she took enough education courses to earn a teacher's certificate,[19] and her second doctoral dissertation was on efficient teaching methods.

She and husband had discussed teaching the "Gilbreth system" of motion study to members of industry, but it was not until after his death that she created a formal motion study course. Her first course began in January 1925, and it offered to "prepare a member of an organization, who has adequate training both in scientific method and in plant problems, to take charge of Motion Study work in that organization." [20] Coursework included laboratory projects and field trips to private firms to witness the application of scientific management.[21] She ran a total of seven motion study courses out of her home in Montclair, New Jersey until 1930. [22]

Meanwhile, Gilbreth had been lecturing at Purdue University since 1925, where her husband had previously given annual lectures.[23] This led to a visiting professorship in 1935, when she became the first female engineering professor at Purdue; she was granted full professorship in 1940, dividing her time between the departments of industrial engineering, industrial psychology, home economics, and the dean's office where she consulted on careers for women. [24] In the School of Industrial Engineering, she help establish a time and motion study laboratory, and transferred motion study techniques to the home economics department under the banner of "work simplification".[25] She retired from Purdue in 1948.

Besides teaching at Purdue, she was also appointed Knapp Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin's School of Engineering[26], and taught at other universities including the Newark College of Engineering, Bryn Mawr College, and Rutgers University.[27] She became resident lecturer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1964, at the age of 86.[28]

Education

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Gilbreth graduated from the University of California in 1900 with a bachelor's degree in English literature and was the first female commencement speaker at the university. She originally pursued her master's degree at Columbia University, where she was exposed to the subject of psychology through courses under Edward Thorndike.[29] However, she became ill and returned home, finishing her master's degree in literature at the University of California in 1902. Her thesis was on Ben Jonson's play Bartholomew Fair.[30]

Gilbreth completed a dissertation and attempted to obtain a doctorate from the University of California, but was not awarded the degree due to noncompliance with residency requirements for doctoral candidates; this dissertation was later published as The Psychology of Management.[31] Instead, since her immediate family had relocated to New England by this time, she attended Brown University and earned a Ph.D in 1915, having written a second dissertation on efficient teaching methods. It was the first degree granted in industrial psychology.

Awards and Achievements

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During her career, Gilbreth received numerous awards and honors, including 23 honorary degrees from such schools as Princeton University, Brown University, and the University of Michigan. She was accepted to the membership of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1926, becoming its second female member; the society later awarded both her and her husband (post-humously) the Gantt Medal in 1944 for her contributions to industrial engineering.[32] In 1950, she became the first honorary member of the newly-created Society of Women Engineers.[33]

In 1965, she became the first woman appointed to the National Academy of Engineering [34][35]. The next year, she received the Hoover Medal, an engineering prize awarded jointly by five engineering societies, for her "contributions to motion study and to recognition of the principle that management engineering and human relations are intertwined.... Additionally, her unselfish application of energy and creative efforts in modifying industrial and home environments for the handicapped has resulted in full employment of their capabilities and elevation of their self-esteem."[36]

She served as an advisor to Presidents Hoover, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson on matters of civil defense, war production and rehabilitation of the physically handicapped.[32]

Selected Bibliography

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  • The Psychology of Management: the Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and Installing Methods of Least Waste (1914)
  • Applied motion study; a collection of papers on the efficient method to industrial preparedness. (1917) with Frank B. Gilbreth
  • Fatigue Study: The Elimination of Humanity's Greatest Unnecessary Waste; a First Step in Motion Study (1916) with Frank B. Gilbreth
  • Motion Study for the Handicapped (1920) with Frank B. Gilbreth
  • The Quest of the One Best Way: A Sketch of the Life of Frank Bunker Gilbreth (1925)
  • The Home-maker and Her Job (1927)
  • Living With Our Children (1928)
  • The Foreman in Manpower Management (1947), with Alice Rice Cook
  • Management in the Home: Happier Living Through Saving Time and Energy (1954), with Orpha Mae Thomas and Eleanor Clymer
  • As I Remember: An Autobiography (1998), published posthumously

http://openlibrary.org/books/OL7135980M/The_psychology_of_management http://www.archive.org/details/appliedmotionst00gilbgoog http://www.archive.org/details/fatiguestudyeli01gilbgoog

Notes

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  1. ^ Lancaster 2004, pp. 38-39.
  2. ^ Lancaster 2004, p. 41.
  3. ^ Lancaster 2004, p. 50.
  4. ^ Lancaster 2004, p. 55.
  5. ^ Wood 2003, p. 125.
  6. ^ Lancaster 2004, p. 363.
  7. ^ Graham 1998, pp. 49, 54.
  8. ^ Hartness, James (1912). The Human Factor in Works Management. New York and London: McGraw-Hill. p. 159 pages. Republished by Hive Publishing Co (Hive management history series, no. 46) (ISBN 978-0879600471).
  9. ^ "Discussion of the Report of Gilbreth, Inc. to the Johnson & Johnson company, 1 January 1927". Museum of Menstruation. Retrieved 16 April 2011.
  10. ^ Graham 1998, p. 218.
  11. ^ Graham 1998, p. 188, citing "Planned Motion in the Home," The Gilbreth Management Desk pamphlet, c. O f. NE, N-File, Gilbreth Collection at Purdue University.
  12. ^ Lancaster 2004, p. 273.
  13. ^ Lancaster 2004, p. 281.
  14. ^ Lancaster 2004, p. 286.
  15. ^ Wood 2003, p. 128.
  16. ^ Lancaster 2004, p. 315.
  17. ^ Lancaster 2004, p. 309.
  18. ^ Morden, Betty J. (1990). The history of the Women's Army Corps, 1945-1978. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. p. 72.
  19. ^ Lancaster 2004, p. 47.
  20. ^ Graham 1998, p. 96, citing Lillian Gilbreth, typescript of an advertisement for Gilbreth, Inc., c.134 f. 0830-20, N-File, Gilbreth Collection at Purdue University.
  21. ^ Graham 1998, p.98.
  22. ^ Graham 1998, pp. 100.
  23. ^ Graham 1998, p. 104.
  24. ^ Graham 1998, p. 234.
  25. ^ Graham 1998, p. 236.
  26. ^ Lancaster 2004, p. 339.
  27. ^ Ogilvie, Marilyn Bailey (2000). The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: Pioneering Lives From Ancient Times to the Mid-20th Century, Volume 1. New York: Routledge. p. 502. ISBN 9780415920384. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  28. ^ Kimble, Gregory A. (1996). Portraits of Pioneers in Psychology, Volume 2. Psychology Press. p. 113. ISBN 9780805821987. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  29. ^ Lancaster 2004, p. 55.
  30. ^ Lancaster 2004, p. 57.
  31. ^ Wood 2003, p. 125.
  32. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Graham was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  33. ^ "The SWE Story... timeline of achievement". Society of Women Engineers.
  34. ^ Finken, De Anne (Spring 2005). "Lillian Moller Gilbreth, Ph.D.: A Legend in her own time - and now!" (PDF). SWE Magazine. Society of Women Engineers. pp. 16–22. Retrieved 15 April 2011.
  35. ^ "National Academy of Engineering Armstrong Endowment for Young Engineers - Gilbreth Lectures". National Academy of Engineering. April 2011.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  36. ^ "ASME - Past Hoover Medal Recipients". American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
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