From the cycle of Walter A. Shewhart (1939) as W. Edwards Deming taught it in Japan in 1950, where Japanese executives and JUSE gave it the Plan, Do, Check, Act wording.
A four-step loop that plans a change with a predicted result, tries it small, checks the outcome against the prediction, and then adopts, adjusts, or drops it.
When to reach for it
Improving a process through small, measured trials, where one large untested change would carry too much risk.
How it runs
- Plan: choose the change, predict the result, and decide how to measure it.
- Do: try the change on a small scale.
- Check: compare the result with the prediction.
- Act: standardize what worked, or revise and go around again.
Where it sits in SOLVE eX
Go to the source
- Statistical Method from the Viewpoint of Quality Control, Graduate School of the US Department of Agriculture; edited by W. Edwards Deming, 1939
- Out of the Crisis, MIT Center for Advanced Engineering Study, 1986