Editor’s note: Mike Micklewright will be a guest on Quality Digest Live, on Feb. 28, 2014, at 11 a.m. Pacific/2 p.m. Eastern.

At Modus we now have a posted, dominant project at all times. We post it as a large sticky note on the wall. This is the banner saying, “If you pull something and have any choice whatsoever, pull it from this backlog.”

Over the years, I’ve observed a number of efforts at various companies to implement A3 problem solving, an approach based on the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle that summarizes the problem and solution on a folded form, usually 11 in. × 17 in.

In part one, we looked at the importance of understanding findings in order to make better decisions.