The Deming Cycle is a 4 step process that is typically used in business or project process improvement.
The 4 steps of the Deming Cycle are: Plan, Do, Check, Act or sometimes referred to as PDCA. PDCA was the brainchild of Dr. Edwards Deming who is considered by many to be the father of modern quality control. It is typically used as a repeating process to improve project quality.
Here a few notes on the Deming process improvement philosophy:
- Managers are encouraged to stop sacrificing quality for short term gains
- Managers must manage for the long term
- Workers can only correct 15% of quality problems
- The other 85% is the management’s responsibility because they result from the system
- Productions systems must be stable for quality to be realized
- Processes can be tested with statistical process control charts
- Quality cannot be “inspected” into products or services.
- Quality must be designed into the product, service, or system processes
Here is a brief description about how to perform the Deming Methodology:
Plan —Set the short-term objective
- Study the process
- Determine the time frame
- Define the opportunity
- Decide what data will be needed
- Decide what each member will do as part of the project team effort
Do—What the plan said
- Collect the data
- Design studies or devices
- Test the theory to achieve the opportunity
- Train people on data collection and analysis
Check—To see that the plan was carried out
- Observe the results
- Compare project studies to plan
- If the plan was not carried out, then do it
- Look for lessons for future use
- Discuss adjustments in approaches
- Determine courses of action and changes
Act—On the recommendations of the team
- Implement fixes, adjustments, etc.
- Inform others of needed changes
- 3 options
- Adopt the change
- Abandon the change
- Modify and repeat cycle with different variables
Then—Begin the cycle again
- Confirm goals
- Set new objectives
- Adjust teams
- Modify methods, etc