Henry Gantt quotes

Henry Gantt was an American mechanical engineer and management consultant, renowned for developing the Gantt chart. This graphical tool transformed project management by visually tracking task progress and timelines. He pioneered new approaches in industrial efficiency and labor management. Here are 10 of his quotes:

The greatest problem before engineers and managers today is the economical utilization of labor. The limiting of output by the workman, and the limiting by the employer of the amount a workman is allowed to earn, are both factors which militate against that harmonious co-operation of employer and employee which is essential to their highest common good.

Henry Gantt

Engineers were the only members of the community "who understand the needs of the nation, desires of the workmen, and the power of the productive forces"

Henry Gantt

The aim of our efficiency has not been to produce goods, but to harvest dollars... The production of goods was always secondary to the securing of dollars.

Henry Gantt

Scientific investigation is rapidly putting at our disposal vast amounts of knowledge concerning materials and forces, which it is the business of the engineer to utilize for the benefit of the community. Well-designed plants and efficiency labor-saving devices, to be seen on every hand, bear testimony that he is doing at least a portion of his work well. When, however, it comes to the operation of these plants and the utilization of these labor-saving devices, the lack of co-operation between employer and employee, and the inefficient utilization of labor, very much impair their efficiency. The increase of this efficiency is essentially the problem of the manager, and the amount to which it can be increased by proper study is, in most cases, so great as to be almost incredible.

Henry Gantt

Taylor's friend Henry Gantt explains to his fellow engineers in the middle of the First World War that they must "develop a task system on the basis of democracy that will yield as good, or better, results than those now in operation under autocracy"

Henry Gantt

There is another and higher leadership, that of the intellect, by which the methods and thoughts of one man may affect the whole civilized world. Industrial leaders who have most prominently attracted our attention in the past are those who have, by their inventions or their direction of activities, accumulated large fortunes; but none of these are as great as the man who by the force of his intellect leads people throughout the civilized world to benefit themselves and others. Such a man was the late Frederick Winslow Taylor who, in his determination to eliminate error and to base our industrial relations on fact, set an example which will have an effect all over the world.

Henry Gantt

It is becoming perfectly clear that the principles underlying industrial and military efficiency are the same and that a nation, to be efficient in a military sense, must first be efficient industrially.

Henry Gantt

The mechanical engineer today is carrying forward, under the direction of science, the work that was begun by the mechanic who first learned to chip flint or make a fire; and it is he alone that can lead the mechanic of today to a better understanding of his problems, and the capitalist to a better appreciation of their solution.

Henry Gantt

Finance and industry must be socialized somehow.

Henry Gantt