Saturday, November 14, 2009

Today's post promotes Dr.Deming's Management Cycle

PDCA is a fundamental base and principle of the Hoshin Planning & Control System. The PDCA Cycle is essentially a definer of what means "Management". Let me explain these 4 components:

P: --------------------------------------------------------------------
PLAN .. includes a number of things in the PDCA cycle:
  • WHICH: The target area, say Quality, and it's subset of say 2 targets: Examples: Customer Rejects; Internal rejects.
  • HOW MUCH: Each target's measurement basis and it's numbers: Example: PPM (bad parts per million good ones)
  • WHY: = my target here is tied back to which major policy* of the company as a whole. (*policy- another discusion to come)
  • REFLECTION: Analysis of how we ''managed'' last year; how did our PDCA go?
  • 8-D: Analysis of the problem today (This can use Quality Control Analysis techniques/ tools)
  • WHAT: This year's BOLD OBJECTIVE : target number(s) From 100 To 50 PPM
  • HOW: Activities defined which we plan this year in order to succeed/ improve and meet the stated target. Say 2 or 3 and sometimes 5 or 6 activites. One of these may be very broad like acquire ISO/ AS9000 and such.
  • WHO: will help me (I am the cross-functional leader). From which professional & functional disciplines.
  • WHEN: the due date for completion of this particular stated activity and the frequency of PDCA follow-up/ formal review. (Project management techniques will aid this endeavour)

D: -------------------------------------------------------------------

DO .. means we get the activities and sub-activities and tasks etc etc done (via our cross-functional teams) within a short period of time before the next review.

  • Mike's real experiences says review cycles should be monthly.

C: --------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHECK .. means that this is a control system. We check daily; and formally we review monthly.

  • We measure the output and compare it to the plan (i.e. like a servo-mechanism or 'system')
  • Post the today's numbers and compare to the target.
  • Post the % done for each activity and compare to the % expected by this point in time.
  • Evaluate our performance as good, so-so, poor
  • Tip: use a circle: O for good, /// for so-so, X for poor, XX if even worse than last year !

A: ------------------------------------------------------------------------

ACT .. (( may be better understood as ADJUST )) means that we take action to get back on target.

  • First step here is we REFLECT deeply on how/ why etc we came up short.
  • 8-D further analysis of the problem
  • Decide next steps/ activities re-energized that will get us back on track.

Keep this cycle going for ever and ever amen.

OK that's it for me this morning,

Please post a comment and let me know your thoughts and such.

:) Mike Davis ex-Toyota subsidiary VP.