Plan-Do-Check-Act-Anticipate Cycle

[Marc]

That says you do not have to go through the life cycle if you only have the PDCA. The extra A in part comes from feedback during the life cycle of the part/device/whatever.

Yes, one can say Prediction is only a part of planning, but in that case I hope that planning isn't a one time thing.

 

[Jim Wynne]

PDCA is referred to as the Shewhart cycle because when you're done with "act" you go back to the "plan." The whole idea (it seems to me) behind the cyclical nature of the strategy is continualous planning (anticipation), so in my mind the extra "A" is redundant.

 

[Marc]

I can accept that. The point is it doesn't end until the product is no longer produced. Many people make that mistake in APQP (thinking APQP ends when production begins).

 

[Rob Nix]

Juran refers to the continuity of the PDCA 'cycle' in his handbook (pg. 4.8), taken from Deming's 'Out of the Crisis' (pg. 88). Juran also depicts it - I think in 'Quality Planning and Analysis - as a spiral.

I've found that every 'problem solving' process invented follows this repeating spiral no matter whether it is called PDCA, PDSA, DMAIC, 8D, or whatever.

I don't ANTICIPATE anybody disagreeing with this.... RATS!

 

[Polly Pure Bread]

Why don't you just tell Toyota, Honda, Sony, Mitsubishi and every other major Japanese manufacturer that they were wrong to listen to Deming in the 1st place?

Anticipate is defeatist. It tells me that you have not trust in your own process because you're expecting failure. Why not stick to what has been proven historically and financially?

I would prefer to look at it as a proactive action. It doesn’t connote a negative impression on me. This means it is now part of the process to be more proactive to ensure no problems will occur because we’ve already anticipated that there is potential problem and we’ve already done something about it to “prevent” it from happening.

 

[Jim Wynne]

Juran refers to the continuity of the PDCA 'cycle' in his handbook (pg. 4.8), taken from Deming's 'Out of the Crisis' (pg. 88). Juran also depicts it - I think in 'Quality Planning and Analysis - as a spiral.

I've found that every 'problem solving' process invented follows this repeating spiral no matter whether it is called PDCA, PDSA, DMAIC, 8D, or whatever.

I don't ANTICIPATE anybody disagreeing with this.... RATS!

I don't think "spiral" is appropriate. A spiral starts at a central point and moves progressively away from it (or in reverse, moves towards the central point, where it terminates) but in any case the ends don't meet, and it proceeds (theoretically at least) infinitely. I think Juran's usage was an attempt to differentiate his point from that of Shewart just for the sake of differentiation.

 

[Rob Nix]

Jim Wynne: A spiral starts at a central point and moves progressively away from it

Yeah, Yeah. Blah Blah. I wasn't doing a lesson in geometry. Actually, Webster's (Spiral - 1b) does allow for a helical definition also.

 

[Jim Wynne]

A helix is, in essence, a spiral in three dimensions.

 

[QCAce]

I would prefer to look at it as a proactive action. It doesn’t connote a negative impression on me. This means it is now part of the process to be more proactive to ensure no problems will occur because we’ve already anticipated that there is potential problem and we’ve already done something about it to “prevent” it from happening.

I've found in the past this can cause things to get messy. Many people begin 'anticipate' things that will likely never happen in which case we end up building an overly complicated and unnecessarily costly quality system that we have to put up with.

The premise of your original question seems to ask if PDCA can be improved, and there appears to be an emphasis on trying to make it more preventive focused?
In an earlier reply, Marc emphasized the importance of facts and data analysis. I think this is the key but I will expand on that thought...

I think the others are correct that said Anticipate can be rolled into Plan, and it is a continuous cycle...PDCAPDCAPDCA....

But most of the time as new quality professionals we come into a process that is already in existence when we try to implement PDCA. So I would recommend starting with a focus on the data collection and reporting, rather than the Planning phase. Make the data easy to collect and the reporting as easy to understand as possible. This will then help focus the planning efforts on improvement of the processes to yield the desired improvement in the metrics.

Practice PDCA........but implement CAPD..

 

[Stijloor]

Friends,

Why messing with a model that works?

Stijloor.