Red Bead Experiment Analysis

1. Contents

1        Measures taken to maintain quality        3

a)        Training        3

b)        Recognition and awards        3

c)        Incentives        4

d)        Working with best        4

2        Were they able to achieve their quality goal?        4

3        Why?        5

4        What is the root cause of the quality standard deviation?        6

5        Quality goal of solvent recovery project        6

Reflection on Red Bead Experiment

1. Measures taken to maintain quality

In the red bead experiment, there are four measures which were taken to reach the production target and required quality by eliminating the manufacture defects. They are as follows:

a) Training

b) Recognition and awards

c) Incentives

d) Working with best

1. Training

In this experiment, the employees of the bead production department were given the sufficient training to handle the bead production. Enough measures were taken to train them more properly. They are well acquainted with good manufacturing procedures and do the work in a safe manner, so that there are no injuries and no contamination during the production. In addition, the health and safety measures implanted in the industry are taken with utmost care and has almost no casualties while manufacturing the beads. This is the record maintained by the industry for a few years of its inception. Training is given in such a way that the employees can cope up with the difficulties in produce and work can be done with precision. Hence the results are noted to be having a moderate approach in this experiment.

1. Recognition and awards

The head of the department has taken a step to improve the production of beads and quality to remove the defects in beads. The step is to recognize the best employee and giving him an award for his best effort involved in the production of beads. This kind of act will surely increase confident in their own abilities and decisions. If you want other people to believe in your capability, you must first believe in yourself. This motivation by recognition will enhance his work further also encourages the employees who are not doing well in the production. However sometime this kind of intensives can create feeling of jealousy among employees of the same working group, this can lead to internal conflict among employees and spoil working environment. Therefore, by using this technique there can be a little improvement in the production and quality of the beads.

1. Incentives

The next step was taken to further increase the production and quality. The plan of the head of the department was to provide the incentives for the workers as per the work. This can bring the healthy competitiveness among the employees. So, that the increase in numbers in production can be seen. This motivation by providing incentives and gifts can show an impact on human psychology to work harder and better and eventually giving good results. Unfortunately, the production is not so good compared to the previous production results when compared to this experiment, but the alternate can also happen. The most probability of the results show the positive side.

1. Working with best

To lead a team to success, leaders must possess an extraordinary amount of focus. It’s important to eliminate distractions from the work area and to hone in on the key issues at hand. While leaders are often pulled in numerous directions simultaneously, they must be able to retain clear minds and focus on the things that matter.

In this process, the best employees were retained in the company and below average employees were dismissed. The aim is to get the best results from the best employees and these can do more time and allowed to expedite their work so the target production and quality can be reached. The Red bead experiment’s target is not met and mostly had low production results. However, there are some drawback of this technique too. Generally, of organization keep on working with best employee it may be possible that the best employees may not able to produce the same result as before due to excessive responsibility or too much work load.

Hence, by implanting these measures the production of the beads can be improved mostly and quality can be improved by decreasing the variations.

1. Were they able to achieve their quality goal?

No, they failed to achieve their quality goal. For each day, the goal is to make 36 products with zero defect. However, in this experiment each day there were some defects and because of that the team was not able to produce 36 red beads. Moreover, each day the Project Manager changes one employee (trainee) because of his/her dull performance. This attitude also affects the production because every day one new person in a team needs to be trained which takes time and affects the performance of rest team members.  

1. Why?

Red bead experiment was a failure cause of many reason. There was no quality plan, the approach was not right, the deadlines were not clear enough. The resources were not assigned properly. The team was not skilled enough. The points are explained further below.

One of the reason for not achieving desired goal is that the production manager was stressing only on safety not the production. The production manager lacks leadership qualities. The management was incapable of finding the right production manager who could handle the task. The production manager couldn’t train the new employees is another reason for the failure of the project. The company lost the contract because it was unable to meet the deadlines asked by the customer.

The slogan of company was excellence, teamwork and integrity which was made to motivate employees and get better results. But from the first shift the slogan was acting as a burden on employees and somewhere employees were facing some mental stress about their responsibilities.

In addition, team members involved in the experiment were not skilled members. The management could find suitable workers for the assigned task. The management couldn’t estimate the resources required to handle this kind of projects. There was no backup plan to reach the milestones. The team was not clear about the goals. They had less knowledge about the experiment. Also, workers had lack of experience. They did not know about the previous lessons of the experiment. Though, all the workers and instructors were performing in the better flow but they also faced the missing deadlines.