Curious Cat Management Improvement Library - Dictionary
Red Bead Experiment - learning tool made famous by Dr. W. Edwards Deming in his 4 day seminars. The tool helps illustrate that managers can often tamper rather than manage when they act without understanding the systems they manage. The tool can be used to help managers see that they may make silly demands of the people in their organizations. This has often helped open managers minds to why they should learn about the Deming's management theories.See the online resources below for a great deal of valuable information.
A DVD of Dr. Deming performing the red bead experiment along with an analysis of what managers can learn from the experiment is available from the W. Edwads Deming Institute.
Related Terms:- Variation including special cause, common cause and structural.
- Tampering
- Control Chart
- Red Bead Experiment summary by James R. Martin.
- Lessons Learned from the Red Bead Experiment (in Word format) by Steven S. Prevette.
- A Video of Dr. Deming running the Red Bead Experiment is available from ManagementWisdom.com (tape 7).
- A Script for Dr. Deming's Red Bead Experiment (in Word format) by Steven S Prevette, Steven M Byers and Thomas Trible. Another script (as a txt file) by Tom Glenn.
- Buy the hardware needed for the Red Bead experiment - this site also has several articles and links on the experiment.
- Understanding Variation by Tom Nolan and Lloyd Provost, May 1990
An excellent article to increase your understanding of variation and the impact of that knowledge on management improvement.