Tiffany Kirk Seminar Two System Variance Essay

Submitted By Tiffany-Kirk
Words: 1165
Pages: 5

Seminar Two System Variance
Operations Management
Baker College Online
Instructor: Sally Rogers
May 25, 2015
Tiffany Kirk

The red bead experiment starts out with the directions and the description. You have a small rectangular box and a larger box. The beads are dumped in the larger box and the procedure is to dip the paddle with the open circles into the beads, pick up the paddle to 4 inches tilting it 47 degrees and what happens is that the holes (50) are filled with either the red beads or the white beads. Each person is doing the same concept 5 times and coming up with a different measure of variance. As long as the process that you are doing is effective in the case of the red bead experiment it was not effective and the system did not allow those that were doing to work to continually improve of the process to make it better. They had to continue to do the same process and regardless of why type of work you do, it is all the same. When understanding the variance it was basically the importance of understanding the variance and making an attempt to draw and accurate conclusion from the data that you had. The numbers made no sense in terms that there was no value to the employee but many times you see organizations (like the one I work in) look past the numbers and not relate them to the value that has been provided by the employee and rate and reward employees. It is not always about numbers but how you are achieving the end result and the variation needs to also be understood. A control chart is a good way to measure the natural variation in a system because they cannot create numbers that do not exist it is based on the facts of the production and you can use these facts from the charts that are created to understand the variation and to make good business decisions based on evidence.
The red beads are the result of a poor production system. All of the people that were active in the experiment were considered the workers on an assembly line and because of all of the different ratios of red beads within the 5 people it signified that the system that was in place was a problem. This process showed that the willing worker or participants did not have any control over the process or the procedure therefore they could implement changes to correct or make the system better and by doing the same steps each time it does not necessarily mean that the outcome will be the same.
Quality was the outcome with attempting to only have 3 red beads in the tray, this was impossible to achieve making the numerical goals and the production standards to not be effective and if a company want to achieve a higher quality standards with their products then they need to make sure that they have a production system in place to achieve the standard that they are looking for.
Performance could not be measured effectively using this system and there was no effect on the outcome because the process was not good. By using a statistical method (SPC) you would be able to see if the system was a stable system would cause the variation and level of output to be predictable along with the costs. All of the variation differences were causes from the system or the process and not from the worker and there will always be a variation and it proved the point that sometimes it is not the people , it is the process that the people are engaged in.
The lessons that were learned from the Deming red bead experiment was that sometimes a system will cause an employee performance management issues and what was implied was that logically the employees could not succeed due to the range of error. This system concept with respect to the rules and procedures show that even though you are repeating the same steps you may not always get the same results. Your total cost variable control is the sum of tasks multiplied by hours multiplied by the daily rate and depending on how the task is being processed could result in the business losing money