Plan Do Study Act (PDSA)

Walter A. Shewhart first discussed the concept of PDCA in his 1939 book, Statistical Method from the Viewpoint of Quality Control, although it was Shewart's protégé Deming who encouraged a systematic approach to problem solving and promoted the now widely recognised four step process for continual improvement.

Deming refers to it as the PDSA Cycle (Plan Do Study Act) or the Shewhart Cycle. The Japanese call it the Deming Cycle. Others call it the PDCA Cycle (Plan Do Check Act) or the Deming Wheel.

The model can be used for the ongoing improvement of almost anything and it contains the following four continuous steps: Plan, Do, Study and Act.

Plan	Develop a plan for improving quality at a process
Do	Execute the plan, first on a small scale
Study	Evaluate feedback to confirm or to adjust the plan
Act	Make the plan permanent or study the adjustments

Continual Improvement Tools & Techniques
A Guide for Business Improvement

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This guide explains how to carry out more than twenty tools & techniques necessary to ensure your business continually improves.

Topics covered include:

Affinity diagrams, Bar charts, Black & white charts, Brainstorming, Cause & effect diagrams, Design of Experiments (DoE), Failure Mode, Effect and Criticality Analysis (FMEA/FMECA), Fault Tree Analysis (FTA), Five WHY’s for root cause analysis, Five Ws & one H for problem definition, Flow charting, Histograms, Pareto analysis, Pictograms, Pie charts, Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle, Quality Function Deployment (QFD), Rating, Repeatability and Reproducibility tests (R&R), Run charts, Significance testing, Solution effect diagrams

Also includes a handy matrix showing when to apply which tool & technique.

Click here to Purchase Your Guide

Links
The North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources
NCDENR provide an excellent six step model that puts some meat and useability onto the PDSA Cycle...

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