PDCA - From Problem-faced to Problem-solved
The PDCA Cycle is a checklist of the four stages (Plan, Do, Check, Act)
which is a very useful tool to get from `problem-faced' to `problem
solved'.
The concept of the PDCA Cycle was originally developed by Walter
Shewhart, the pioneering statistician who developed statistical process
control in the Bell Laboratories in the US during the 1930's. It is
often referred to as `the Shewhart Cycle'. It was taken up and promoted
very effectively from the 1950s on by the famous Quality Management
authority, W. Edwards Deming, and is consequently known by many as `the
Deming Wheel'.
Use the PDCA Cycle to coordinate your continuous improvement efforts. It both emphasises and demonstrates that improvement programs must start with careful planning, must result in effective action, and must move on again to careful planning in a continuous cycle.
Plan: analyze what you intend to improve, looking for areas that hold opportunities for change. The first step is to choose areas that offer the most return for the effort.
Do: Carry out the change or test (preferably on a small scale). Implement the change you decided on in the plan phase.
Use the PDCA Cycle diagram in team meetings to take stock of what stage improvement initiatives are at, and to choose the appropriate tools to see each stage through to successful completion.
Check: - the results. What was learned? What went wrong?
This is a crucial step in the PDCA cycle. After you have implemented the change for a short time, you must determine how well it is working. Is it really leading to improvement in the way you had hoped? You must decide on several measures with which you can monitor the level of improvement.
Act - Adopt the change, abandon it, or run through the cycle again.
After planning a change, implementing and then monitoring it, you must decide whether it is worth continuing that particular change. If it consumed too much of your time, was difficult to adhere to, or even led to no improvement, you may consider aborting the change and planning a new one. However, if the change led to a desirable improvement or outcome, you may consider expanding the trial to a different area, or slightly increasing your complexity.
Here is how the PDCA cycle relates to the elements of ISO 9001.
The Ramp of Improvement
If a change led to a desirable improvement or outcome, you may consider expanding the trial to a different area, or slightly increasing your complexity. This sends you back into the Plan phase and can be the beginning of the Ramp of Improvement.
In relation to elements of ISO 9001 the Ramp of Improvement can be represented as below.
