Lillian Evelyn Gilbreth

• Born: May 24, 1878
• Birthplace: Oakland, California
• Died: January 2, 1972
• Place of death: Phoenix, Arizona

American engineer and psychologist

Known as the “mother of modern management,” Gilbreth was one of the first organizational psychologists and was a pioneer in the field of industrial engineering.

Primary field: Business management

Primary inventions: Organizational psychology; time and motion study

Early Life

Lillian Evelyn Gilbreth was born Lillie Evelyn Moller and changed her first name while she was an undergraduate. Her parents were Annie Delger Moller, daughter of a man who became rich selling boots to miners during the California gold rush, and William Moller, a plumbing merchant and scion of a family that had become wealthy in the sugar-refining business. Gilbreth was the second of ten children, although for all practical purposes, she was the oldest because the elder child died as a baby. Despite her father’s opposition (he did not approve of women attending college), she attended the University of California, Berkeley, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 1900 and a master’s degree in 1902, both in English literature. She wrote her master’s thesis on Ben Jonson.

During a 1903 stopover in Boston en route to Europe, Lillian met Frank Gilbreth (1868-1924). He proposed after she returned to the United States, and they were married in 1904. To help Frank with his construction business, Lillian changed her major to psychology. She wrote a Ph.D. dissertation but did not receive the degree from Berkeley because the university refused to waive the residency requirements. Titled “The Psychology of Management,” the dissertation was published in thirteen monthly installments in the Industrial Engineering and Engineering Digest from 1912 to 1913 and later in book form. She rewrote her dissertation to earn a Ph.D. from Brown University in 1915. It was the first doctorate ever granted in industrial psychology.

Lillian and Frank were the parents of twelve children, eleven of whom lived to adulthood. Their children were Anne, Mary (died of diphtheria in 1912), Ernestine, Martha, Frank Jr., Bill, Lillian, Fred, Dan, Jack, Bob, and Jane. Frank died in 1924, and Lillian never remarried.

Life’s Work

When Lillian met Frank, he was already the owner of one of the largest construction companies in the United States. Her first contribution to his business was indexing a booklet about his company. She then cowrote two books with him, Concrete System (1908) and Bricklaying System (1909), although she did not receive credit.

In 1907, Frank metFrederick W. Taylor, who founded the theory of scientific management. Taylor was a controversial figure at the time, and his system was criticized as being rigid, dehumanizing, and abusive. It consisted of combining financial incentives and training to improve worker productivity after analyzing jobs. The most controversial aspect was his use of a stopwatch. Frank gradually shut down his construction business to become a business consultant using Taylor’s methods. He and Lillian formed Gilbreth, Inc., and eventually developed their own variation, which they called motion study, or micro-motion study.

Frank and Lillian cowrote The Primer of Scientific Management (1911), a textbook of Taylor’s system. It is not known how much Lillian contributed, but it appeared solely under Frank’s name. Lillian first appeared as a coauthor with Frank with Fatigue Study (1916), although she wrote the first draft by herself. Her recommendations for improving productivity by minimizing fatigue included footrests, armrests, adjustable work benches, improved lighting, sensible clothes, and regular rest periods.

During World War I, Frank was commissioned as a major in the U.S. Army, stationed in Oklahoma, and assigned to apply his motion-study techniques to the assembly and disassembly of the Lewis machine gun and other automatic weapons. He made films of the processes and sent them home to Lillian to analyze. After the war, they worked with amputees to develop work techniques that would allow them to rejoin the workforce. Both France and Germany adopted their methods in the rehabilitation of disabled veterans.

Lillian’s first project after Frank’s untimely death in 1924 was to finish her biography of him, The Quest for the One Best Way, which she had hoped to present to him as a birthday present. In 1925, she founded the Motion Study Institute to teach the techniques they had developed. She consulted for Macy’s department store from 1925 to 1928 on hiring and training procedures, employee handling, and the organization of clerical work. Specifically, she recommended noise installation and better lighting in the cashier room. In 1928, she worked on personnel policies for Sears, Roebuck and Company and gave lectures at the Denison Company. From 1928 to 1929, she consulted for the Gibbs chain of secretarial colleges. At the same time, she analyzed sandwich preparation for the Green Line chain of restaurants.

Gilbreth’s books after her husband’s death were The Home-Maker and Her Job (1926) and Living with Our Children (1928), in which she discussed the challenge of balancing family and career. She recommended taking a scientific approach to homemaker duties so that the woman would have time for a career. She served on President Herbert Hoover’s Emergency Committee on Unemployment from 1930 to 1931 and on a subcommittee for the President’s Conference on Home Building and Home Ownership in 1930. She also served on committees for Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson. She served as a member of the board of directors of the Girl Scouts from 1930 to 1950.

In 1934, Gilbreth designed three of the rooms in “America’s Little House,” a three-bedroom model home built by the Better Homes in America. They were the kitchen, the clothing closet, and the nursery. She then became a consultant for General Electric in its designs for washing machines and refrigerators. She helped the New York Herald Tribune set up its Home Institute and consulted for New York University Medical Center’s Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine on how to design a kitchen for the handicapped. During World War II, she consulted for manufacturers hiring women assembly workers for the first time. Gilbreth taught management at the School of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University from 1935 to 1948. She later taught at the Newark College of Engineering, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of the Philippines.

Impact

Gilbreth was famous during her lifetime for being able to balance career and family. She did have one advantage that most twenty-first century women do not, however: Her mother-in-law lived with the family until her death in 1920 and served as the household manager. Then, the eldest child still living at home took a turn at managing the house. In addition, Gilbreth always had servants. Even during the time of the family’s lowest income for a few years following Frank’s death, she employed a handyman who doubled as a cook. Nonetheless, bearing and raising twelve children is extremely time-consuming. All eleven who survived to adulthood graduated from college and raised families of their own. Gilbreth was also a model for senior citizens in that she maintained her heavy lecturing and teaching schedule until the age of ninety.

Her contribution to the scientific management movement was the application of educational psychology to the movement’s techniques. Her study of fatigue in the workplace eventually became known as ergonomics. Much of her work involved the handicapped, and she worked with the American Institute of Architects to provide wheelchair accessibility in existing buildings and to incorporate wheelchair-friendly restrooms, elevators, and ramps into the standards for new buildings.

In 1965, Gilbreth became the first female member of the National Academy of Engineering. In 1954, the Western Society of Engineers gave her its Washington Award, and in 1966 the American Society of Civil Engineers gave her the Hoover Medal. In 1962, the American Institute of Industrial Engineers devoted its annual conference to the work of the Gilbreths. She was named Outstanding Alumnus by the University of California, Berkeley, in 1954.

Bibliography

Detar, James. “There’s Got to Be a Better Way: Best Practices—Ergonomics Pioneer Gave ’Efficient’ a Whole New Meaning.” Investor’s Business Daily, December 23, 2005, p. A-04. An appreciation of Lillian’s work.

Gilbreth, Frank B., Jr. Time Out for Happiness. New York: Thomas Crowell, 1970. Affectionate biography of Frank and Lillian by their oldest son. Less emphasis on humorous anecdotes and more emphasis on their professional lives than in his other two books.

Gilbreth, Frank B., Jr., and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey. Belles on Their Toes. New York: Thomas Crowell, 1950. Second volume (after Cheaper by the Dozen) of family memoirs by two of the Gilbreth children chronicles the period after Frank’s death with more emphasis on Lillian.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Cheaper by the Dozen. New York: Thomas Crowell, 1948. First volume of family memoirs by two of the Gilbreth children up until the time of Frank’s death, with emphasis on the humorous anecdotes about Frank’s use of scientific management techniques to raise a family.

Gilbreth, Lillian Moller. As I Remember: An Autobiography. Norcross, Ga.: Engineering and Management Press, 1998. Gilbreth’s autobiography was written in 1941 but not published until 1998.

Graham, Laurel. Managing on Her Own: Dr. Lillian Gilbreth and Women’s Work in the Interwar Era. Norcross, Ga.: Engineering and Management Press, 1998. Biography with emphasis on the period between the world wars.

Lancaster, Jane. Making Time: Lillian Moller Gilbreth—A Life Beyond “Cheaper by the Dozen.” Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004. Comprehensive biography that disputes the portrait of Gilbreth that emerges from Cheaper by the Dozen and Belles on Their Toes.