Certification to any of the core ISO standards requires organisations to adopt a process approach. This process approach is also referred to as the PDCA (‘Plan, Do, Check, Act’) Cycle or the Deming Cycle or Shewhart Cycle after its two creators, Dr. W. Edward Deming and his mentor Walter Shewhart of Bell Laboratories, New York.
Following the PDCA Cycle is an essential component of undertaking internal audits and management reviews, which ultimately also makes this process a foundation of achieving and maintaining ISO certification.
If you’d like to understand how the PDCA Cycle works and the role it plays in facilitating process improvements, draw on our expertise here at S&J Auditing & Consulting. Today, our ISO consultants will outline how the PDCA Cycle works in full, plus how you can integrate the PDCA Cycle and maintain a process approach for your own organisation.
What is the PDCA Cycle?
The PDCA Cycle is a four-step iterative process that’s designed to improve processes with greater efficiency and within the structure of a Business Management System.
A solution-oriented method for problem solving, the PDCA Cycle aids in pinpointing areas for improvement with precision, developing improvement strategies, monitoring the results of these initiatives, and iterating further from there.
Here’s what you can expect from each component of the PDCA Cycle:
PLAN
Setting objectives, identifying opportunities, and establishing metrics.
The ‘Plan’ stage is all about defining objectives and developing processes. Pinpoint an opportunity for improvement (objective), and develop a plan (or process) that addresses the issue.
DO
Implementing the plan on a small scale and gathering data.
Put your plan into effect in a measurable way. The ‘Do’ phase doesn’t necessarily involve formal implementation of a solution, but rather a test run or macroscale evaluation. The results of your ‘Do’ phase will be assessed during the ‘Check’ phase.
CHECK
Reviewing data, comparing outcomes, and identifying gaps.
Review the performance of a proposed change, analyse data from performance monitoring measures, and identify any further areas of improvement. Given the data collection and analysis components of the ‘Check’ phase, this is most commonly the phase of the PDCA Cycle where internal audits and other types of ISO audits are scheduled.
Once data has been collated and analysed and hypotheses have been drawn, these findings should ideally be presented to top leaders during a management review. With this data-driven decision making that includes all relevant staff and stakeholders, the ‘Check’ phase is crucial for ensuring proposed improvements are fit for integration into your Business Management System at all levels.
Note: the PDCA Cycle is also often referred to as the PDSA Cycle, swapping the ‘C’ for ‘Check’ out for an ‘S’ for ‘Study’. This is because Dr. Deming found the focus on ‘Check’ to be more related to the ‘implementation of a change, with success or failure’, whereas the focus of ‘Study’ is more on assessing results to revise theories. In other words, whilst PDCA relates to actionable improvements, PDSA relates to evolving thought processing.
ACT
Standardising successes or revising plans for further iterations.
If your tests delivered subpar results, then it’s time to return to the ‘Plan’ phase and begin the PDCA Cycle again. If your tests delivered desired results or your internal audit processes helped identify and rectify points of failure, then it’s time to take action based on findings and refined recommendations developed during your ‘Check’ phase.
You can use the findings from this PDCA Cycle to inform future cycles as well. This continuous learning alongside systemic improvement strategising is what makes the PDCA Cycle and Management System monitoring crucial components of ISO 9001 and other ISO Standards.
Benefits of the PDCA Cycle
We’ve already touched on some of the benefits of the PDCA Cycle above, but it’s important for business leaders to maintain a clearcut understanding of the pros of this process approach. That way, you can communicate these benefits to your fellow management team – and their involvement will be crucial for maintaining ISO compliance.
Here are the primary benefits of utilising the PDCA Cycle for managing continuous process improvements:
Improved Efficiency & Business Growth
By facilitating continuous process improvements, the PDCA Cycle aids in improving organisational efficiency over the long term. With the improvements developed through the iterative PDCA process approach, organisations can adapt their Management Systems alongside their business growth, ensuring reduced risks of business disruption caused by unaddressed inefficiencies.
Reduced Operational Costs
Business disruptions caused by inefficiencies can result in financial loss to an organisation. Similarly, poor quality management, environmental monitoring, and other operational failures can greatly affect customer retention and acquisition, as well as eating into business costs.
In this sense, the PDCA Cycle can also help optimise operational costs, keeping resource consumption rates low whilst ensuring output stays high.
Stronger Management Systems
Whether you’re implementing an Environmental Management System with ISO 14001 certification or an Occupational Health and Safety Management System with ISO 45001, you will need to implement continuous process improvements to maintain certification. This is why the PDCA Cycle is considered to be foundational for maintaining certification and performing well across recertification audits and surveillance audits.
The PDCA Cycle also supports improved process standardisation, ensuring that any pain points with existing processes can be systemically resolved. This systemic infrastructure for internal improvements reassures team members within an organisation that their processes are being shaped to support them – not the other way round.
Faster Goal-Setting
As the PDCA Cycle requires organisations to set objectives and then develop actionable steps to reaching those objectives, this process approach makes goal-setting more effective and accessible. Whether you’re heading an SME or a larger enterprise, the PDCA Cycle can help provide the adaptable workflow you need to make goal-setting a sustainable ongoing process for your enterprise.
Easier Process Improvements
Because of its cyclical and iterative nature, the PDCA Cycle provides an accessible and sustainable approach to systemic process improvements. Organisations of all sizes can use the PDCA Cycle as a framework for integrating process improvement measures into their routine workflows, ensuring that you and your staff don’t have to allocate additional time and labour towards innovation.
Empowered Workplace Culture
As the PDCA Cycle promotes innovation, maintaining this process approach in your own workplace can encourage your staff to contribute to improvement strategising. This breeds a culture of empowerment, where team members take ownership of their workflows and processes, and maintain agile thinking when it comes to brainstorming improvements.
Data-Driven Decision Making
As an iterative model for improvements that relies on tests and analyses, the PDCA Cycle is effectively a scientific method for organisational processes. You run tests, you analyse the results of those tests, and then you make decisions based on those results. This process ensures that any proposed improvements or changes are well-informed and with documented evidence of their effectiveness.
Making decisions using this method helps reduce risks relating to innovation, which ultimately makes process improvements less nebulous and infinitely more likely to deliver the desired results.
When to Use the PDCA Cycle
The PDCA Cycle is designed to be used when:
- Starting on new improvement projects
- Implementing new standardised processes
- Establishing and testing performance monitoring measures (i.e. data collection and analysis)
- Developing and testing new products, services, or other company offerings
- Conducting routine internal audits
Utilising the PDCA method can also look different across different industries. For example, in the education sector, the PDCA Cycle can be used to test curriculum changes before widescale implementation. In manufacturing facilities and laboratories with ISO 17025 certification, the PDCA Cycle can be used to assess the efficacy of new materials or production processes.
How our Clients use the PDCA Cycle
Here are some of our case studies that have reaped the benefits of maintaining a tailored PDCA process approach for their organisations.
WA Industrial Chrome Engineers
The team at WA Industrial Chrome Engineers are reliant on continuous process improvements via internal audits to maintain their ISO 9001 certification. By following the ISO guidelines outlining process improvements for Quality Management Systems and with the expert support of our ISO consultants at S&J Auditing & Consulting, the WA Industrial Chrome Engineers team have been able to maintain their QMS over consecutive years. Their continually evolving QMS also aids in improving the quality of their products and services and qualifying for higher level tenders.
Aboriginal United Services
With their multi-faceted HSEQ system, Aboriginal United Services possessed dynamic requirements from a PDCA Cycle. Their ideal improvement methods would require a holistic approach to process development, and tricertification for ISO 9001, 14001, and 45001.
Our ISO consultants at S&J Auditing & Consulting were able to develop a tailored certification and implementation strategy for their organisation. The systems established were designed to monitor all identified risks and track performance across a range of interconnected key performance indicators.
The end result was a HSEQ system that evolves organically alongside the Aboriginal United Services team and headquarters.
Harness the Power of the PDCA Cycle for Your Business
It’s essential to ensure your PDCA Cycle integrates into standard operating procedures for sustained process improvement. This integration looks different from industry to industry, which is why a tailored approach can help you reap the benefits of PDCA process improvements faster.
If you’re looking to harness the power of PDCA improvements for your organisation, then our ISO consultants at S&J Auditing & Consulting can provide the expert insights and strategy development assistance that you’ll need to get there faster.
Get in touch with our consultants today to see how we can help set up the optimal PDCA Cycle and certification timeline for your business.
