1.

Introduction

In production management activities, for example, the production plan

(Plan) is developed first, and production activities (Do) are carried out in
accordance with the plan. In the production plan process, not only the
production volume is determined, but also production staff, production
methods and materials, as well as quality, costs and delivery time
(implicitly when necessary). Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle
According to the concept of the PDCA cycle, actions are not simply
carried out in accordance with the plan, but the Check (evaluation) and
Act (improvement) activities are also carried out.
The PDCA cycle can be defined by the principle of actions on
business activities. The PDCA cycle is considered to increase the number
of

management man-hours

required.

In

particular,

operations

for

collecting various historical data may increase the workload.The Check

(evaluation) step is sometimes called Study, leading to the name PDSA
cycle. The process is also known as the Plan-Do-See cycle (the PDS cycle).
In this case, See represents both Check and Act.
The PDCA cycle is also called the Deming cycle after Dr. W.
Edwards Deming (1900-1993) of the United States, who promoted quality
management in Japan after World War II. Dr. Deming himself called the
cycle the Shewhart cycle, because he considered the PDCA cycle to have
been created by Dr. Walter A. Shewhart (1891-1967), who was Dr.
Demings teacher.Today, the concept of the PDCA cycle has been adopted
by various international standards and management activities.
i.
ii.
iii.
iv.
v.
vi.
vii.

Quality management system, ISO9000.

Environmental management system, ISO14000.
Spiral models for software development.
Risk management system.
Information security management system (ISMS).
Development of management plans.
Examinations of marketing activity hypotheses, etc.

3.0

Rules or requirements

In the introduction to ISO 9001, there is an explanation of the Process

Approach

and how

important

this is to implementing

a Quality

Management System that is compliant with the ISO 9001 requirements. In

addition to this, there is a note about the methodology know as Plan-DoCheck-Act being applied to all processes. It then shows a graphic, which
shows a very rough overview of how the standard requirements fit within
a PDCA cycle. Below I will describe how the cycle of improvement works
within the QMS (with the ISO 9001 clause numbers in brackets).
Plan Planning of the QMS starts with the initial documentation of the
Quality Manual an overview of the QMS, and the documentation of how
you will control documents and records within the QMS. This is followed
by the companys focus on the customer and understanding customer
requirements, developing the Quality Policy and Quality Objectives, and
planning to achieve these. Further planning on how to realize the product
or service, including what resources are needed and how they will be
applied, is the final step in the initial planning.
Do Planning is useless unless the plan is carried out. Product or service
requirements need to be identified designs developed, purchasing carried
out,

and

product

received

from

suppliers

and

verified

against

requirements. The process of producing the product or service needs to

be carried out, any non-conforming products or services need to be
addressed, and the equipment to monitor and measure the product,
services and processes needs to be controlled. In short, the activities of
making and supplying the product or service to customers need to be
done.
Check There are several requirements in the standard to check the
processes of the Quality Management system to ensure they are
functioning properly as they have been planned. There is a need to
monitor and measure not only the product or service to ensure it meets
requirements, but also the processes used to ensure they are adequate
and effective. Analysis of data and Internal Audit of the processes are
the key ways to assess the effectiveness of the system. Further is the

Management Review process, which reviews and assesses all of the

monitored data to make changes and plans to address the issues.
Act Action in this case involves the actions needed to address any
issues found in the check step. Corrective Actions and Preventive Actions
to eliminate the causes of actual or potential nonconformities are the first
step in acting to improve the system. The outcome of Management
Review is also an action to provide the resourcing needed to go into the
updated planning part of the cycle and continue the improvement.
Plan As stated, this cycle starts again to ensure there are plans in place
for further improvement. Findings during the Internal Audit in the Check
phase may have led to corrective or preventive actions from the Act
phase, which in turn will require changes in planning to meet the updated
requirements in the next Do phase. The Management Review looks at
the outcomes of Internal Audit, Corrective and Preventive Actions and
outputs resource plans to support any changes. Resources are assessed
and increased, decreased or re-assigned as the business needs dictate.
This leads into another round of Doing, and the cycle continues.
An example would be if your company planned to reduce scrap by 5% by
making certain changes to a process, the changes were made and the
process ran, checking of the process showed that you reduced the
amount of scrap by 3%, and you acted to make further changes to
improve. The next planning for this process might be to make further
changes and reduce the scrap by a further 4% in the following year.