Frank Bunker GILBRETH- Lillian Moller GILBRETH (GILBRETHS)

One of the greatest couple of the science and engineering. Frank and Lillian Gilbreth worked in an extremeley good coorporation for the development of motion and time study as en engineering and management tecnique.Frank Gilbreth’s education was no longer than high school. He started as a bricklayer then he became a building conductor, an inventor and finally he became an occasional lecturer. He and Lillian Moller married and they started to work together. Their motion and time studies had something to do with the fact that they have extremely large family. Frank Bunker Gilbreth used himself and his family in the experiments..Gilbreth’s first trade was to find ways of making bricklaying faster and easier. To acheive this he and his wife developed 18 basic motion that involves grasp ,transport loaded, hold etc.. These motions were called “therbligs” and by creating these they aimed to develop the best method in working. These elements were studied by means of a motion-picture camera and a timing device which indicated the time intervals on the film as it was exposed. Gilbreths were, above all, scientists who sought to teach managers that all aspects of the workplace should be constantly questioned, and improvements constantly adopted. Their emphasis on the "one best way" and the therbligs predates the development of continuous quality improvement (CQI), and the late 20th century understanding that repeated motions can lead to workers experiencing repetitive motion injuries. Frank Gilbreth also designed the standart tecniques used by armies to teach recruits how to rapidly disassemble and reassemble their weapons even when blindfolded or in total darkness. These tecniques helped save millions of lives. After Frank Gilbreth's death, Dr. Lillian Gilbreth continued the work and extended it into the home in an effort to find the "one best way" to perform household tasks. She has also worked in the area of assistance to the handicaped, as, for instance, her design of an ideal kitchen layout for the person afflicted with heart disease. She is widely recognized as one of the world's great industrial and management engineers and has traveled and worked in many countries of the world.

Although it is thought that Gilbreths were inspired by Taylor’s ideas, there were some differences between the two. Taylor was like a stopwacth (koronometer) which means that Taylor generally deals with the time of the production process, while The Gilbreths aim to reduce the motions in production. For The Gilbreths welfare and psychological situation of the workers were more important. Especially Lillian Gilbreth being an industrial - organizational psychologist contributed his husband’s studies by taking into account the workers’ psychological sides in order to increase efficiency. Also Gilbreths developed the triple promotion plan which means that workers would do their own missions, get ready to be promoted and at the same time they would educate the other workers.

References:
1-http://gilbrethnetwork.tripod.com/bio.html
2-en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillian_Moller_Gilbreth -
3-en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Bunker_Gilbreth –
4-www2.aku.edu.tr/~hozutku/sayfalar/klasik.ppt