The PDCA cycle was developed by W. Edwards Demming, the architect of TQM. A PDCA usually begins after a Root Cause Analysis has been carried out and a root cause to a problem has been identified. The PDCA cycle consists of four phases; plan, do, check, and act:
- Plan – A change, or changes are planned to address the root cause with established objectives.
- Do – Implement the planned change.
- Check – Validate the change by measuring its performance against the desired objectives.
- Act – If the change is not performing to achieve desired results, implement corrective action to improve performance.
Figure 13: The PDCA Cycle