PDCA/ Continuous Improvement
What is it?
Developing a Lean culture through continuous improvement is adopting a relentless elimination of waste in all its forms and the identification and removal anything that disrupts the continuous flow of the process. PDCA or Plan-Do-Check-Adjust is a method which encourages process improvement by applying scientific thinking to everyday problems.
How do you practice PDCA?
PDCA is a 4-step iterative process
1. Identify the problem and some potential solutions.
2. Try one of the potential solutions.
3. What happened? Did it work? If not, why not?
4. Make some adjustments and repeat process.
Other references for this process: PDSA (Plan-Do-Study-Act), Shewhart cycle or Deming cycle.
What factors are critical for success?
PDCA and Continuous Improvement can be applied everywhere, from automobile manufacturing to bagging groceries.
•Keep an open mind.
•Learn to work in iterations.
•Look for waste. Waste comes in many forms: Transportation, Inventory, Motion, Underutilized talent, Waiting, Over processing, Overproduction and Defects (TIMUWOOD).
•Record your experiments. Ideally in the form of an A3 so you can keep track of what you’ve tried.