If you’re considering opportunities for business improvement, dynamic growth and profitability, “plan,” “do,” “check” and “act” (PDCA) is a leading option. Walter A. Shewhart developed the PDCA cycle in the 1920s and W. Edwards Deming made it famous in the 1980s, even though he modified the PDCA cycle to PDSA (plan, do, study and act).Today, PDCA has become a fundamental tenet of quality management. All the emphasis on process thinking is based on the PDCA cycle, be it ISO 9001, ISO/TS 16949, Six Sigma, TQM or SPC. PDCA is a closed-loop engineering application, or a feedback diagram for the quality process. In fact, if you consider the evolution of quality from in-line, on-line, off-line and quality management to the best-in-class, PDCA has held up pretty well.

Every step of the quality evolution leads to performance improvement. Increased quality leads to rising customer expectations, which in turn drives further product and process improvement. Faster and better communication, along with methodologies like Six Sigma, have evolved over time to further accelerate improvement.

 …