This video describes the PDCA cycle. It covers the basics of the PDCA cycle and how it relates to other improvement cycles.

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️ Transcript of the video

The Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle is also called Plan-Do-Check-Adjust.

This cycle is also called the Deming cycle, after William Deming, who promoted and popularized it.

This is the most commonly used improvement cycle.

I must stress that perhaps many organisations do not fully understand it.

In particular, there is a tendency to spend a lot of time in the DO phase and almost completely forget the Plan-Check-Act phases.

The PDCA cycle is a scientific method.

Deming emphasized that the four phases must be balanced.

It is not right to implement the PLAN quickly, spend a lot of time DOING, skip the CHECK phase and spend little time on the ACT phase.

The PDCA cycle is considered one of the basic pillars of the Toyota Production System.

Deming argued that organizations should think about change and improvement like a scientific experiment.

They should make assumptions, observe phenomena, conduct experiments, and learn from mistakes by disproving hypotheses.

Let us now go into the details of each phase.

STEP 1 – PLAN

The planning phase is not just about planning what to do.

This phase also serves to communicate, explain the purpose of the activity, discuss and reach consensus.

In this phase, hypotheses about the desired result must also be formulated, which can be critically examined in the CHECK phase.

The PLAN phase is also used to plan the cycle execution times.

It is said that the approach of Japanese companies is to invest a lot of time in planning in order to achieve faster and smoother implementation.

Even Einstein thought so when he read a famous aphorism of his: "If I had only one hour to save the world, I would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem and only five minutes finding the solution."

STEP 2 – DO

This phase should go well and quickly if you have taken enough time in the previous phase.

Finally, in this phase, the planned improvement must be implemented, usually in a prototype stage.

STEP 3 – CHECK

This phase is crucial for an organization that wants to become a /"learning organization/".

Very often a phase is skipped and as a result many learning opportunities are lost.

Here are some questions for a good check phase:

– Does it work as predicted?
– Did it work as planned?
– If it didn't work as planned, what caused the gap?
– What can we learn from this experience?

STEP 4 – ACT

This step is also called “adjusting.” If we have done a good job, we can standardize the goals we have achieved.

The new standard achieved must reflect the best available practice currently.

Of course, this process will not remain frozen forever.

You have to think of improvement as a continuous movement from one standard to a better standard.

This continuous cycle is triggered by another iteration of the PDCA cycle.

Conclusions

The PDCA cycle is considered the fundamental improvement cycle.

The overlap of the phases of the PDCA cycle with other improvement cycles such as 8D, SIX SIGMA and A3 problem solving should be obvious.

Whatever improvement cycle you decide to adopt, remember that the discipline not to jump is fundamental to take the steps and dedicate the right time to each phase.

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