Operations Management - I Love Lucy - Case Study

To better understand operational issues caused by a poorly designed workspace, I’m bringing to you a scene from the “I love Lucy” TV show where Lucy and her friend Ethel are working at a candy factory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnbNcQlzV-4

In this episode, entitled “Job Switching”, Lucy and Ethel switch places with their husbands; the men stay at home, and the ladies go to work at the candy factory for a day. The ladies haven’t been doing a good job, and their supervisor is giving them a last chance at the candy wrapping station. The supervisor explains their job: as candy comes down the conveyor belt, they need to wrap each piece of chocolate in paper and put and place it back on the conveyor belt. ​She then warns them that if even a single piece of unwrapped candy gets past them, they’ll both be fired; which probably isn’t the best instruction to be given. The ladies are already nervous and stressed out, and this makes them realize there is no tolerance for mistakes.

As the conveyor belt doesn’t begin moving immediately, the supervisor leaves the room. Shortly afterwards, the conveyor belt begins moving and the ladies are left alone. They start working at a fast pace to keep up with the machine speed; they are struggling and barely managing, and the conveyor belts starts to go faster and faster. The ladies try to keep up, but they fall further and further behind. As they grow desperate, they do whatever they can to hide the candies. Pieces of chocolate go into their mouths, in their pockets, under their caps, down their blouses—anywhere they can think of to get rid of the evidence.

When the boss comes back, she only checks the conveyor belt for unwrapped candies; and fails to check the output generated. She wrongly assumes the pace is slow for them, since they made no mistakes, and tells the operator to increase the speed even more.

This really doesn’t work - the ladies are visibly distressed and most of the chocolates end elsewhere; there is a huge waste. However, if they somehow manage to eat/hide all the evidence, they would still be considered to be doing a good job, according to the supervisor’s poorly set standards.

This scene clearly demonstrates that speeding up a broken process will not provide a better result. Both the speed of the conveyor belt and Lucy and Ethel were creating bottlenecks that caused significant issues in throughput - or revenue generated for the candy factory.

Some clear issues, including workspace design problems that can be identified are:

● Isolated processes and no visual contact What is going on 'upstream' and 'downstream' is absolutely unknown to Lucy and Ethel; and vice-versa. I’m sure if the conveyor belt operator could see what was happening, she would know to adjust the pace.

● Miscommunication Her message that no candy should be left unwrapped, prompted them to hide the evidence instead of working with the supervisor to try to find a realistic