Deming’s Famous Red Bead Experiment With A Twist

Improve the system, distort the system, or distort the data

n 1991, I had the privilege of attending one of W. Edwards Deming’s four-day seminars and I still proudly display the certificate of completion in my office. One of the highlights of the seminar, of course, was Deming’s famous red bead experiment. I had read about the red bead experiment, but this was the first time I saw it up close and personal. It truly was a profound moment in my professional education.

Deming and the red beads

During the red bead experiment, Deming announced that he had created a company whose mission was to produce white beads for its customers. He recruits from the audience four “willing workers,” two quality inspectors, a chief quality inspector, and an accountant. The “willing workers” are then “trained” to produce white beads by dipping a paddle with 50 holes to capture white beads from a box of 8,000 red (20%) and white (80%) beads. The red beads are “defects.” The “willing workers” are warned often against producing red beads.

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Interesting Twist

That is an interesting twist, Steve. What changes do they make to the system to get the performance better?

In another twist, I used to run the Red Bead in our Department of the Navy seminars. During one long stretch, we did a one-day introductory course for thousands of people on a naval base, 25-30 people at a time, so we were doing the experiment every day for months. My partner and I had a routine where I was the CEO, sitting in the back of the room. He was the foreman, and would have to come back and report to me every day, and I would give him a hard time, and offer "suggestions for improvement."
We had made up some play money fifty-dollar bills(with Deming's portrait in place of Grant's), and when it came time to reward the "best worker," I would peel off four of the bills and send him out to present the 200-dollar "merit raise." One day, on a whim, he made a great show of pocketing one of the bills as he walked up to the production line, and congratulated the best worker, saying, "Here's, uh...a one-hundred dollar merit raise."
Everyone laughed, but something extraordinary happened. We had probably done this with 30-40 groups up to this point, and no one had tried to cheat. This time, however, the inspectors started reporting lower numbers, the workers tried dumping red beads or picking them out and pocketing them, anything they could do to game the system. It got so bad that the foreman had to count the beads himself and keep his own count so we could have an accurate np-chart at the end!
We taught probably 50-60 classes after that, and we switched off...every other day, he would pocket the money. In all of the classes where everyone knew management was cheating, the workers, inspectors and chief inspector all found it acceptable to cheat. In all of the other classes, with "honest" management, no one tried.

Red Bead with a Twist

Thank you Steve for sharing this with the Quality Digest readers. Awesome! This stupidly simple experiment is powerful.

Dirk van Putten

What did they Change?

I like your twist. What kinds of process changes did the teams invoke?

Jonathon Andell
Andell Associates LLC
602.689.6041

Simple....They distorted the

Simple....They distorted the system or the data or both. They made no process changes that were useful. That is management's job.

Excellent Steve

Your 'twist' happens in real life. Imagine you are working in a company where you and thousands of your workmates have been given cost savings targets of $1,000,000 per annum. Your CEO has been scammed by a hawker of Six Sigma, making outrageous promises. Your CEO sacks 10% of staff each year. You are terrified. The result is inevitable ... massive data fraud. The company goes down the drain and the CEO walks away with a $417,000,000 golden handshake.Professor Deming:

8 Drive out fear.

9 Break down barriers between staff areas

10 Eliminate slogans, exhortations and targets for the workforce.

11 Eliminate numerical quotas for the workforce and numerical goals for management.

In this non contact, Covid-19 environment, you might enjoy doing the Red Bead Experiment using Augmented Reality:https://www.qualitydigest.com/inside/six-sigma-article/augmented-realit…