Deming PDCA

W Edwards Deming placed great importance and responsibility on management, at both the individual and company level, believing management to be responsible for 94% of quality problems. His fourteen point plan is a complete philosophy of management, that can be applied to small or large organisations in the public, private or service sectors. 

He believed that adoption of, and action on, the fourteen points was a signal that management intended to stay in business. Deming also encouraged a systematic approach to problem solving and promoted the widely known Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) cycle. The PDCA cycle is also known as the Deming cycle, although it was developed by a colleague of Deming, Dr Shewhart.

It is a universal improvement methodology, the idea being to constantly improve, and thereby reduce the difference between the requirements of the customers and the performance of the process. The cycle is about learning and ongoing improvement, learning what works and what does not in a systematic way; and the cycle repeats; after one cycle is complete, another is started.