PDCA Cycle Guide: the troubleshooting tool

PDCA Cycle Guide: The Troubleshooting Tool.

“Three factors are fundamental to obtain results: leadership, technological knowledge and the method“, said Vicente Falconi.

The PDCA cycle is a method often used in the industrial sector to promote continuous improvements of a process, product and/or service. The acronym comes from the English Plan-Do-Check-Act, translated as Plan-Do-Check-Act, commands that correspond to the stages of the cycle.

The method refers to the 1637 work, ‘Discourse on Method’, written by the philosopher René Descartes. The book is a mathematical and philosophical treatise on the Cartesian method for solving problems, seeking to discover a way of conducting human thought in search of truth.

This technique became popular in the corporate environment thanks to the American academic, Edward Deming, who in the 1950s, was invited by the Japanese government to help in its industrial reconstruction in the post-war scenario, helping the country to become an industrial power and a model of overcoming and productivity.

The Brazilian Prof. Vicente Falconi, after knowing the mentioned case, decided to bring it to Brazil, becoming a reference in its application. According to Falconi Consulting, the method can be applied to any type of problem, at a personal or professional level, acting as a fundamental basis for the management processes of any type of organizations that aim at results and profitability.

“Promoting an honest and constructive performance evaluation, giving continuous feedback, […] Promote a culture of making decisions based on facts and data. To achieve the objectives and maintain the correct focus, there is a need to analyze the results and establish goals. The criteria, discipline and passion used in the method to set goals” – Falconi

Even so, applying the PDCA method is not a simple task, it requires commitment and intense analysis of the problem. The choice of goals is essential: they need to be well-defined and provocative. It is important that the entire process is based on data collected before, during, and after implementation, as its objectives must be evaluated, monitored, and achieved in a way that sustains itself over time. The cycle will be covered several times throughout the resolution of the problem without an end in sight, so that different action plans can be tested, and when they bring the expected results, they will be implemented and standardized.

From these, the method will help you point out the best way to get closer to your goals and make necessary adjustments as the action plan that is being executed.

How to apply the PCDA method

The PDCA cycle corresponds to the application of 4 steps, which are executed one after the other. But for continuous improvement to exist, the process does not necessarily have an end, which is why it is called a cycle. The following illustration represents the cycle:

As soon as you reach the end of each step, a review is carried out, and if everything went as expected, it continues to the next step or returns to planning. It sounds easy, but it’s not “just” planning, executing, analyzing the results and repeating, it goes far beyond that. Below we will show you how to put each step into practice individually:

1st stage: Plan

Planning  is crucial, as it covers a series of reflections that need to be analyzed from the data collection. It is interesting to open space for discussion about causes and actions and how to solve them, bringing countless possibilities, to prioritize more important points.

1. Identify your problems objectively to create your goals:
   • After finding the problem to be solved, it is essential to set goals, as they help to stay focused and help to create a strategy, remembering that your goals need to be challenging, requiring new knowledge, but in a realistic way, that are really feasible.

2. Analyze the problem from the data collected, identifying its causes to define changes to be made:
   • Data collection is a fundamental ally to analyze the problem and its origin, monitor patterns and variations during the application of the PDCA method, with the help of dashboards contributing to the choice of how to achieve your goals.

1. Create an action plan:
   • After establishing your goals and analyzing your data, it’s time to establish a date, a responsible person and analyze how certain results can be achieved, in a measurable way, to be monitored, and that they are sustained over time. This phase must be detailed so that no failures occur throughout the process.

Throughout the action plan, one should always be aware that the schedule is being carried out to the letter, so that there are no interferences in the planned process, facilitating changes to be made in the future and increasing the effectiveness of the method.

2nd stage: Do

This is the step of executing the action plan, whether it is creating a pilot, presenting it to supervision or putting it into practice, documenting your questions, data and problems that will arise along the way.

Caution must be exercised to avoid failures and increase the success of actions, without this the result will not correspond to the desired one:

1. Training:
   • The team must be communicated and trained for the method to work, temporary consultants can help in this phase. Each task must have a person responsible for executing it and a pre-established deadline, remember to make sure that the people involved have a full understanding of the plan and are in favor of the strategy for the execution of the actions.

2. Execution:
   • Once all parties understand their objectives, roles, and deadlines, the execution of the action plan should begin. Everyone must work, without changing the methods previously aligned, so that the goal is achieved.

3. Collect data:
   • All results, whether good or bad, must be documented with their proper dates, observed and compared with the schedule, creating indicators for future evaluations and validating the adopted strategy.

Before continuing to the next step, it is worth remembering that it is important to have rigorous planning for good execution, avoiding errors and waste of time, and in some cases even resources. And if any inconvenience occurs during the process, it will be necessary to go back to the previous step, identify the reason for the error and start over. Only with a good execution of the stage is it possible to continue the cycle.

Step 3: Check

The checking stage  begins with the execution stage, so it will be easier to monitor the results. In the PDCA cycle, statistical methodology is essential for the effectiveness of the process; The choice of an effective tool is essential for the analysis and verification of the method, to indicate if the result is in accordance with what was previously planned or if some adjustments will be necessary.

1. Achievement of goals:
   • Always compare data, monitor, measure and reassess your performance indicators, list the secondary effects and success of the actions taken. Finally, make a summary of what happened, remember to use subjective parameters (good, bad, better, worse – Be careful, maybe the good of one is not good for another);

2. Restart the process:
   • If the implementation does not bring the expected results, it will be necessary to adjust or recreate an action plan, that is, return to the first step (Plan ). First, detect what went wrong: if it was a lack of mastery of the problem, little study, failure in communication with the execution and planning team, incorrect execution of the action plan, etc.

Here we will also identify gaps and improvements to be exercised in the next cycle. It is interesting that the checking phase is repeated as often as the data arrives, so your data collection tool must provide updates in real time and remotely.

4th stage: Act – action

The action consists of making corrections on the gaps identified above. By knowing what went right or wrong, we can apply the same solution to improve another process or fix it.

1. Error analysis and implementation of corrective actions:
   • Analyze your data and integrate all your new knowledge. Adjust probable deviations based on what is going wrong from this analysis, if there are changes to be made, restart the cycle, aiming to further improve the team’s work, if there is no change to be made, it is time to standardize the method.
2. Standardization:
   • Document the new standard to be adopted, share your learnings with the team, reflect on changes that can be made, and monitor the implementation of this new process.

Do not leave this step aside, this can result in a lack of analysis of your action, running away from continuous improvement. Each step and phase of this process is important, repetition brings improvement and increasingly impeccable results.

Conclusion

The PDCA cycle is well known for its role in solving industrial problems, as it is an easy-to-apply method that can transform decision-making. The entire process is based on data collected during the stages, and if any unforeseen event occurs, the cycle is restarted. The steps are quite intuitive and have clear objectives within the process:

The application of this method results in an effective plan for achieving goals, and can help with similar problems in other departments. Each time the cycle repeats itself, it tends to be more complex: your goals become bolder and more difficult to apply. Therefore, it is necessary for the entire team to have good training to achieve these goals.

In addition to an effective data collection and analysis tool to better ascertain your steps. The cycle is a great strategy to improve industries, and raise them in their ambitions of goals and results.