Frederick W Taylor was an engineering consultant for factories in the early 1900's. He was concerned with worker efficiency. His focus was removing  the need for craftsman in the production line. Instead, work was broken into smaller steps with tools specialized to make each step easy to reproduce identical units without a skills operator. He also worked with time and motions studies to improve worker productivity (Owings & Kaplan, 2012, p. 51).
  My Manufacturing systems class studies the work of Taylor. As the semester begins, students 
are much like workers in Taylor's description. As a teacher, it is rewarding students grow out of this mindset. As students become tools and processes, they begin to think on their own about how products could be build using various tools and processes.  This is the point where I recognize students are learning beyond the knowledge level.  

The focus was on management of workers' production and efficiency in making products. Worker productivity resulted in lower unit cost due to the use of assembly lines and specialized tools and processes by unskilled workers. This movement began the decline of the traditional craftsman unless the product was a special one of a kind product.  
 Scientific management required exact repeatable measurements and tasks of the worker. Specialized tools made this possible. This allowed management 
to train workers to do a specific task. Furthermore, workers were task oriented while management was setting goals , planning, and supervising (Owings & Kaplan, 2012, p. 51).