Red bead experiment
The red bead experiment was not a success for the company. Additionally, it affects the performance of the employees. The test is not logical because the extraction of white beads from the mixture of red and white is uncertain. It is unpredictable taking the ratio of the probability of white to red beads as X: Y. X and Y, in our case, are variable figures. (“Probability – Mathematics GCSE Revision – Revision Maths”, 2020)
However, the outcome of every day is not affected by human emotions. The company tends to use the carrot and stick motivation technique which still affects the result by bringing up uncertainties. It makes the red bead experiment not efficient at all for the company. An effort to motivate employees by sticking motivational statements neither had a positive outcome. The results changed unpredictably for all the employees. The strategies the white bead company utilized were not successful in improving performance because the production outcome was uncertain, and the employees had minimum control on each day’s level of results.
The working environment of the white bead company is not conducive for production. The employees have to work under so much pressure so that they can avoid firing. It is very ironic because they tense over something they cannot control; today, you might get fewer red beads, but it does not guarantee a better outcome tomorrow. It seems that an employee’s performance was unpredictable hindering continuous improvement. (“The Red Bead Experiment – Continuous Improvement Blog”, 2020)
Nevertheless, the advantage of the inspection system is monitoring production and ensuring continuous production hence maximum utilization of production time and material. However, most human resource, especially employees, tend to be affected by inspection lowering their effectiveness because it always looks like prejudice.
I work in the bread baking industry, and the unit of production has a limit for a given time. For example, there are 100 ovens in the firm which takes an average of five minutes to make a loaf of bread each. That means we produce 100 loaves of bread in every five minutes. It amounts to 12loaves of bread per hour for each machine and 1200 loaves of bread for the whole firm. The management wants the production of 10000 loaves in 8 hours which they term as a production day. It is impossible because we have no control over the effective working rate of the ovens. We can produce 9600 loaves in 8 hours.