PDCA Cycle: Plan Do Check Act (What is PDCA and how is it used?)

PDCA Cycle or PDSA Cycle, Plan Do Check Act, Plan Do Study Adjust. PDCA is the basis for process improvement. OPEX Minute 28: Presented by EMS Consulting Group, Inc.:
www.emsstrateg...
#opexminute #PDCA #kaizen #leanmanufacturing #leanmanufacturingmanagement #leanmanagement #cellularmanufacturing #pdsa
Welcome to today’s edition of the OpEx Minute, presented by EMS Consulting Group. Today we will be talking about the PDCA or Plan Do Check Act. PDCA is the basis for all process improvement. What is it and what are its origins?
Quality gurus Deming and Shewhart are often credited with PDCA. In fact the PDCA cycle is sometimes called the Shewhart Cycle or even the Deming Cycle.
What do the phases of PDCA mean?
Plan is the first phase of the cycle. When working on improvement, the Plan phase is critical. It is where we define the problem, investigate or analyze to determine the obstacles or causes, and identify countermeasures to address the causes. Next, in the do phase we are testing and implementing countermeasures. In the Check phase, we are evaluating the effectiveness of our countermeasures. Are we meeting our target? Finally, in the Act phase, we are making any adjustments needed based on what we found in the Check phase and then standardizing and perhaps spreading our countermeasures to other areas as appropriate. We then find the next problem to solve. This is what we call the Macro PDCA cycle.
Below this, and during our problem solving process, we also have the Micro PDCA’s, where each step in our process is a mini PDCA. We are constantly planning, taking a step, evaluating the results, and using that feedback to plan the next step. This is best described in our OPEX Minute video on Daily Kaizen and Improvement Kata.
The PDCA cycle is the basis for all good problem solving or improvement. Later on in his career, Deming began to use PDSA rather than PDCA where PDSA stands for Plan Do Study Adjust. There is no practical difference between the two. The reason he made this change is to clarify that the Check phase is about studying and evaluating. The term “Check” especially in past decades was sometimes used to mean “stop,” and he wanted to clarify that this is not the meaning of Check in PDCA. If you prefer to use PDSA rather than PDCA, that is completely fine by me.
If you have an interest in learning more about the PDCA cycle, visit our website at www.emsstrategies.com and contact us. We would be happy to help.