Final answer:
The assertion that Walter A. Shewhart's contributions to operations management occurred during the Scientific Management Era is false; his work came after Frederick W. Taylor's establishment of Scientific Management principles around 1911. Shewhart's work in the 1920s with control charts and quality management marked a different focus on the consistency and reliability of outcomes rather than just efficiency and worker productivity.
Step-by-step explanation:
The statement that Shewhart's contributions to operations management came during the Scientific Management Era is False. Walter A. Shewhart's work, particularly his development of the control chart and the concept of process variability, gained prominence in the 1920s, which was after the peak of the Scientific Management Era initiated by Frederick W.
Taylor in the 1910s. Despite Shewhart's focus on quality control and improvement in operations management, his contributions are distinct from the Scientific Management principles, which emphasized time and motion studies, work standardization, and efficiency maximization.
Frederick W. Taylor was a Pennsylvania-based mechanical engineer who developed the principles of Scientific Management around 1911.
Taylor's work focused on improving productivity through scientific observation and optimization of workflows, minimizing wasted effort, and maximizing output. As an advocate for managerial oversight in the division of work, Taylor's management approach leaned towards maximizing profitability and efficiency in industrial settings.
Although his principles improved overall productivity and often led to higher wages for workers, they were also met with criticism for reducing worker autonomy and treating human workers almost machine-like.
In contrast, Shewhart extended the management theories and methods further into the realm of quality control, which became more critical as companies sought to enhance not only efficiency but also the consistency and reliability of their products.
Shewhart's methods ensured that production processes remained stable and provided a statistical foundation for making decisions about process improvements, laying the groundwork for what would eventually become total quality management (TQM) and Six Sigma methodologies.