Operations Management - I Love Lucy - Case Study

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pace.

● Performance management The supervisor did not have realistic expectations on their performance, and was basing their performance solely on amount of unwrapped candy, which isn’t the best performance indicator in this case. Amount of chocolate wrapped would be much more representative of the amount of throughput generated.

● Understaffed while the Lean philosophy is about becoming more efficient, it doesn’t mean thoughtlessly cutting back on employees so they’re forced to do crazy things to get the job done and please the boss. The process is not lean because with the conveyor belt going that fast, two people can’t handle it, so they cut corners as much as they can, to try and look good for the boss, as to avoid being fired.

Some suggestions to better design their workspace and increase throughput:

1. Improve communication between teams. Either by removing walls, installing windows, or installing a “stop” or “slow down” button to let the conveyor belt operator know that they need to adjust the pace. 2. If the pace can’t be adjusted, hire a third person. There is no way two people can continuously provide good results at sugh fast pace without generating lots of waste. 3. Improve communication between teams and their leaders. The supervisor was not clear about avoiding waste when setting standards, and wasn’t realistic with her expectations. She also was not willing to listen to her team to understand if they were experiencing any difficulties or train them to be able to tackle challenges. 4. Setting goals that will lead to higher throughput, such as amount of candy wrapped in a manner that meets company standards.

I hoped this example was useful to portray some common issues that companies facing when trying to be efficient, but focusing on the wrong things that hinder performance, instead of improving it.