Hawthorne Works

Hawthorne Works was a huge Western Electric factory complex in Cicero, Illinois, opened in 1905 to produce telephone equipment on a massive scale and later many other electrical and consumer goods, including refrigerators. At its height, about 45,000 people worked there, and its size required bicycles inside the plant and a private railroad connection for freight. It became nationally significant for the 1920s industrial studies linked to Elton Mayo and later the term "Hawthorne effect," and for its ties to quality management through figures such as Joseph Juran, Walter Shewhart, and W. Edwards Deming. Its history also included many immigrant workers, the loss of 220 employees in the SS Eastland disaster, and eventual closure in 1983.

Cicero, Illinois · United States