Henry Gantt

Henry Laurence Gantt was an American mechanical engineer and management consultant who became one of the founding figures of scientific management. He began his engineering career in 1884 as a draughtsman at Poole and Hunt in Baltimore, and from 1887 worked alongside Frederick W. Taylor at Midvale Steel, where the two jointly received six patents before Gantt went into private practice as an efficiency consultant in 1902. His most lasting contribution was the Gantt chart, a graphical scheduling tool he developed during the 1910s to track tasks against time that became a standard project management technique used on major infrastructure projects including the Hoover Dam and the U.S. interstate highway system, and which remains in wide use in project management software today. He also developed the task and bonus wage system rewarding workers for efficient output above a set standard, and was an early advocate for the idea that businesses carry a social responsibility to the community alongside their pursuit of profit; the American Society of Mechanical Engineers established the Henry Laurence Gantt Medal in his honor.