It’s not a big secret that just about everyone has a dog, cat or multiples of both. The American Pet Products Association (APPA) gives the statistics of their latest market research for 2018/2019 as to what percentage of the U.S. population has pets:

• 68% of U.S. households have at least one pet
• U.S. pets include 90 million dogs and 94 million cats
• 81 to 85 percent of pet owners regard their pets as a reliable source for unconditional love, stress relief, and overall zen for their health.

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) has statistics of their own:

• 6.5 million unwanted pets are surrendered to rescues annually
• Of these, 3.3 million are dogs and 3.2 million are cats
• 1.5 million pets are euthanized annually

The main reason people surrender their pets are behavior issues. Yes, there are other issues, but behavior is usually number one. Let’s talk dogs: they need consistency in their training, there’s no room for variation. Variation creates errors, mishaps, and confusion and in the case of dogs being euthanized it creates waste of a perfectly wonderful life of a once happy pet.

The Six Sigma tool that dog trainers would benefit from would be PDCA, or Plan-Do-Check-Act. If the dog trainer is consistent, clear and knowledgeable in the process used to train the canine, perhaps euthanizing an animal for behavioral reasons would be eliminated completely. 

If a dog isn’t trained properly, it has to do with the trainer, not the dog. If both dog trainers and owners used the DMAIC template to improve their current dog training process (or DMADV to create one), once again Six Sigma would have come to the rescue…literally.

For more information on our Lean Six Sigma courses and services, please visit 6sigma.com. 

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PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) and PDSA (Plan-Do-Study-Act) are two techniques aimed at promoting continuous improvement and extending a company’s ability to stay ahead of a rapidly changing environment. However, while some people confuse them and even use them interchangeably, there are some big differences that are important to observe.

Sure, on the surface, they might look quite similar but once one digs down beneath the surface, various differences start to present themselves, even in steps that have the same name. Understanding those differences and knowing how they affect the application of each method is a critical first step in using them correctly.

PDSA Provides an In-Depth Overview of the Situation

An important difference between the two methodologies is that PDSA attempts to study the consequences of the applied changes more closely and in more detail compared to PDCA. The meaning of the check phase often boils down to running some basic tests to ensure that the new state of the system corresponds to some baseline measurements. However, that may not be enough to get the full picture and ensure that the changes will actually lead to an improvement in the long run.

By replacing this step with the study one from PDSA, you can often see much better results from the analysis of each step’s impact, and therefore see better long-term improvements. Keep in mind that there may not always be a very good opportunity for studying the effects of your change in that much detail, which could call for the use of PDCA instead. But more on that a little below.

Differences in Other Steps

The other three steps seem similar in both methods, but there are in fact some intricate differences to be aware of. The important thing to remember here is that both methods are iterative and cyclic, meaning that you’ll come back to step one after finishing the cycle, and will repeat the whole process with the new knowledge you’ve obtained.

This means that you will sometimes see a real difference in the way the planning and action phases are carried out between the two methods, because you’ll be working with two different sets of data. Whether this will make any impact on the way you’re actually carrying out both improvement systems depends on the context of your own organization’s work style, but in most cases there will indeed be some differences.

Recognizing the Right Use for Each Method

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that either PDCA or PDSA is better than the other one in some way. In the end, they’re both tools, and they were both created with a specific purpose. You must recognize the correct application of each of the two, and know when a situation calls for either of them.

As we said above, sometimes you might not have that much information to work with in the first place, making the use of PDCA more appropriate. Indeed, the short-running cycles often associated with it can often prove much more beneficial when trying to realize quick, to-the-point improvements in your organization. On the other hand, if you need to ensure that you’re looking into the results of your change in an in-depth manner, then you should definitely go with PDSA.

Conclusion

PDSA and PDCA are somewhat similar, yet quite different. It’s important to understand what sets them apart, and realize when a situation calls for either one of the two. With time, you should develop some intuition about the correct use of both, and you will find them to be very viable parts of your arsenal as a lean leader seeking to improve their organization.

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The Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) method is a very useful technique for improving the state of operations within an organization, both on a large scale as well as in a targeted manner aimed at specific components or processes. There are various ways to apply PDCA, and it’s quite flexible in its use as well, making it the ideal candidate for those who want to see good results in their operations over a relatively short time span.

1. Improving processes

The main purpose of PDCA is, after all, to give you a platform for improving the internal processes within your organization. By correctly applying the methodology and using it to evaluate the performance of your organization, you can ensure that every process used in the company from top to bottom can be pushed forward in a controlled, systematic manner.

This is important, because many companies fail to realize the importance of controlled improvement, and end up investing far too many resources in areas of their operation that end up being largely irrelevant in the long run. PDCA allows you to gain control of the situation and ensure that every change you’re making moves things towards a proper goal.

Sometimes you may need to go back and revise certain improvements after the data around them changes later on. That’s fine, as long as you have a good system in place to minimize the impact on other areas of your organization.

2. Adapting to a changing environment

It’s not rare for modern companies to have to work in markets that are very dynamic and evolve in great leaps. Making sure that your operations are always relevant in these circumstances can be tricky, and leaders occasionally realize that the changes they’ve been making to their processes end up pushing them backwards, not forward.

Avoiding this is as simple as knowing what to expect from each of those changes, and that boils down to applying the PDCA method correctly. When you’re working according to a properly defined plan, and you also verify the results of each change, it becomes much easier to know that you’re pushing the business as a whole in the right direction.

Understanding what your customers want is often a huge issue for many organizations, and it can take a long time to adapt your processes towards this goal appropriately. Once you’ve done that though, you’ll find it much easier to ensure that you’re moving in the right direction.

3. Staying ahead of the market

Last but definitely not least, PDCA can allow you to stay ahead of your competition in the circumstances we described above. It’s not just about adapting to the market and customer demands you have to ensure that you’re also relevant with regards to your direct competitors. PDCA can allow you to implement changes in your operations that specifically target your competitiveness potential, and attack the market from directions that allow you to establish a more solid presence on it.

To this end, PDCA relies heavily on collecting a lot of information about the current state of the market. There are many ways to go about this, and data collection is a whole separate area of its own that deserves a more dedicated look, but as long as you take care to plan ahead and know what kinds of data points you need to target, you should find yourself with a lot of relevant information that can prove useful in the long run.

Analyzing that information properly is just as important of course, but correct data collection practices tend to go hand in hand with the appropriate analysis methods. As long as you’ve picked the right system to gather the information in the first place, you should also be able to process it accordingly and do something useful with it.

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The PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) method can be extremely useful in a variety of environments, and its flexibility is one of the main drawing factors for many leaders. When applied correctly, it can accelerate improvement in an organization by a noticeable degree, and can help the company push all of their processes and products towards their limits without exceeding them in a potentially harmful way.

Plant maintenance is a field that can especially benefit from a proper application of PDCA, and learning the ins and outs of the methodology can have huge benefits in this area. As long as every step is carried out correctly, and there is a good system in place for verifying results, you can often see improvements realized in very fast iterations.

Adapting PDCA to Plant Maintenance

When you want to improve your plant maintenance operations through the PDCA cycle, you just have to think about how you can adapt each separate step on its own, and lay the altered version of the cycle over the original implementation.

Each of the four steps will usually have to be changed to some extent in order to make it work better in your specific context, but the good news is that it’s often not that hard to make those changes if you already have some experience applying PDCA from before.

On that note, remember that you may sometimes not actually need to change some of the steps in order to see good results. Don’t automatically start implementing changes for the sake of it, and remember to validate the impact of everything you’re doing before and after making those changes. Otherwise, you risk running into even greater problems down the road.

Improving Inventory Practices

One of the areas that can usually see the biggest improvements when it comes to plant maintenance is the way inventory is stored and organized. It’s not rare for a facility to see significant improvements in its capability to handle complex orders by simply improving the way the inventory is being handled, and you’d be surprised how much room for improvement there usually is in most places.

The good thing about the PDCA cycle is that it gives you actual, verifiable results instead of having you shoot in the dark, and it allows you to easily modify each aspect of your operations until you’re happy with the final result. That way, you can focus on making actual improvements instead of having to spend too much time analyzing the situation and assessing the risk from each change.

Inventory improvements usually lend themselves to PDCA in return too, as there is a lot of opportunity to collect and analyze data in this area. Once you take a look at the big picture from above, you’ll usually start noticing some patterns, and sooner or later you should have a more adequate idea of where waste can potentially be minimized in your operations.

Don’t Rely on PDCA as a Universal Solution

There is one caveat to this all, and that’s the importance of realizing that PDCA is not a magical solution that can automatically resolve all problems in your plant’s maintenance. You should treat it like another tool in your arsenal, and combine it with other proven solutions to get your desired results. Sometimes there will be a more appropriate solution to a given problem, and you should focus on what works instead of what you’re most comfortable with.

Conclusion

PDCA can have great uses in the area of plant maintenance, but it’s important to apply it carefully and in a controlled manner, keeping some of its shortcomings in mind. It’s also a good idea to learn how to combine it with other tools in the area of improvement and problem solving, so that you’ll always have the confidence that you’re using the full range of possible solutions available at your disposal.

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The Effectiveness of the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) Cycle

The Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle is a popular business management method to achieve continuous improvement in an organization. It is widely implemented as a part of a tool within larger improvement methodologies, or as a stand-alone approach to quality control and change management.

The PDCA cycle was popularized by Dr. W. Edwards Deming, and is sometimes referred to as the Deming cycle. It was loosely based on the scientific process, which starts with a hypothesis, continues with an experiment, and finishes with analysis and a conclusion. Those steps correspond to the first three steps of the process. Since the cycle needs to lead to actual results, the last step is meant for taking action and making changes.

But in order to really understand the PDCA cycle and why it works so well, we need to first look at each step in more detail.

Step 1: Plan

The cycle begins by establishing a hypothesis about a possible improvement. In reality this step of the process can actually be broken down to two sub-steps. The first thing that needs to be done is outlining a clear problem, or imperfection in the current state of affairs. The second thing that needs to be done is making a plan for fixing it. The plan should not only induce the changes that need to be made, but a step-by-step implementation strategy as well. Remember, most of the Plan phase is to investigate what is going on, determine the causes, and identify possible solutions. Most of your time should be spent on Plan, otherwise you will be guessing and having to go back through the PDCA cycle multiple times.

Step 2: Do

After the blueprints for the solution of the particular problem are ready, they can be implemented so their effectiveness can be tested. This means not just making a particular change and being done with it, but monitoring it continuously while the experiment is going on, and recording as much data about the change being made. Collecting data on the correct metrics provide the evidence needed to determine if it truly is working or not.

Step 3: Check

After the test has been running for a while, the company should have enough information on how the proposed and provisionally implemented change affected the problem. This data needs to be analyzed, and the results need to be measured compared to the hypothesis from Step 1. This allows you to determine the effectiveness of the implemented solution.

Step 4: Act

In this last step of the cycle, the conclusions made from the test can be put to practice. If the tested solution has some significant outcomes and is cost-effective, it should be implemented. If not, another one must be investigated or a more economical solution needs to be identified. Either way, it’s important to remember that this step is only nominally last, and it is not the end of the process. The cycle should be repeated again and again, and should lead to constant improvement. This will help drive a culture of continuous improvement.

What Makes the PDCA Cycle Effective?

The PDCA Cycle gives an easy to understand framework for iterative improvement. It depends on real-life experiments (not educated guesses), and forces teams to review the data and evidence in order to draw conclusions. Being based on the scientific method, this cycle can be viewed as an approach that has proven itself, and that can reliably produce improvement.

One of the main benefits of implementing a PDCA cycle is that there is a clear separation between each iteration that is tested, allowing for true causality to be established. This will inevitably lead to a reduction in waste, and increase productivity in the long run. The processes becomes better and better understood, and more and more problems are uncovered and solved.

Making the PDCA cycle a part of the way a company operates minimizes the risk when implementing change by increasing control. It also establishes a commitment to constant betterment and improvement that allows a company to remain competitive, and to constantly improve and adapt.

Read more articles about PDCA >>>

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