The full form of PDCA is Plan Do Check Act.

In the 1950s, management consultant Dr William Edwards Deming developed a method of identifying why some products or processes don’t work as hoped. His approach has since become a popular strategy tool, used by many different types of organizations. It allows them to formulate theories about what needs to change, and then test them in a “continuous feedback loop.”

Imagine that your customer satisfaction score on a business ratings website has dipped. When you look at recent comments, you see that your customers are complaining about late delivery, and that products are being damaged in transit.

So, you decide to run a small pilot project for a month, using a new supplier to deliver your products to a sample set of customers. And you’re pleased to see that the feedback is positive. As a result, you decide to use the new supplier for all your orders in the future.

What you’ve just done is a single loop called the PDCA Cycle. This is an established tool for achieving continuous improvements to your business.

The PDCA approach was pioneered by Dr William Deming, and we’ve worked closely with The Deming Institute to produce this article. In it, we outline the key principles of PDCA, and explain when and how to put them into practice.

PDCA cycle is an iterative process for continually improving products, people, and services. It became an integral part of what is known today as Lean management. The Plan-Do-Check-Act model includes solutions testing, analyzing results, and improving the process.

For example, imagine that you have plenty of customer complaints about the slow response rate of your support team. Then you will probably need to improve the way your team works to keep customers satisfied. That is the point where PDCA comes into play.