The era of the Industrial Revolution changed the world. With increasing mechanization and automation of work also comes a change in business management. Work organization is increasingly moving to the center of a still young discipline: scientific management. Its founder, Frederick W. Taylor, was the first to recognize the significance of time studies. His work, however, does remain disputed, even today. The chapter "Frederick Winslow Taylor – Celebrated and reviled, honoured and misunderstood" explains why. Even more crucial to the later development of the MTM process is the research of Taylor's contemporary, Frank Bunker Gilbreth. His studies on motions between 1911 and 1924 were the building blocks for the "Development of the Predetermined Time Systems".

The time comes in 1948: Industrial scientists Harold B. Maynard, John L. Schwab and Gustave J. Stegemerten establish the MTM method with their pioneering research. Objectivity, scientific soundness and a broad application scope cause American industrial engineers to immediately take note. Something new, organizationally, was essential. Accordingly, a group of 11 practicing consultants met at New York City in January 1951, with Dr. Lillian M. Gilbreth and Prof. Harry J. Loberg of Cornell University, to discuss the condition and to find ways of meeting it.

Out of this cooperative approach evolved, in March 1951, the present non profit MTM Association for Standards and Research representing the U.S.A. and Canada. This body grew into the Cooperating National Associations and their incorporating, in six short years, as the International MTM Directorate.