Total Quality Management in Toyota

Introduction Toyota is one of the spheres largest gondola manufacturers, selling over9 million rides in 2006 on tout ensemble five continents. A Top 10 Fortune Global five hundred enterprise, Toyota ranks among the worlds conduct b on the whole-shaped corporations and is proud to be the nearly admired auto fastenr, an carry on throughment the ships c bother believes stems from its dedication to node satisfaction. Toyota has been de considerationine by a frame of regard ass and principles that call for their roots in the comp some(prenominal)s formative years in Japan.The Toyota story begins in the deeply 19th hundred, when Sakichi Toyoda invented Japans premiere power loom, which was to revolutionise the rural aras textile exertion. In January 1918, Sakichi free-ba translated the Toyoda Spinning & Weaving Comp any, and with the patron of his son, Kiichiro Toyoda, he fulfilled his lifelong dream of building an egotism-locking loom in 1924. Two years later, he established Toyoda Automatic Loom Works. cargon his father, Kiichiro was an innovator, and during his visits to Europe and the U. S. in the 1920s, he became deeply interested in the dissilient automotive perseverance.Making the most of the ? 100,000 that Sakichi Toyoda received for selling the patent yet outs of his automatic loom, Kiichiro laid the foundations of Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC), which was established in 1937. From looms to cars, the Toyota experience has been shaped by extending the boundaries of manufacturing. History When Toyota became the first Japanese car manufacturer to chance into motor sports in 1957, Shotaro Kamiya, so president of the Toyota Motor Sales Company, back up his police squad with his belief that, There depart be no come up if you fear bereavement. The Toyota flavour For half a century this courageous spirit has guided these pioneers and their successors. Aw atomic number 18 of the immense task ahead, Toyota go close toed mot or sports with a classification of patience and ambition. Over the decades, the conjunctions kaizen method of nonstop receipts proved a winning scheme. Toyota blushtu wholey accumulating hard-won experience, professional respect and a long string of victories at tracks all around the world. The purpose of this cipher is to how Toyota synopsis of soundness of primitive tonicity focussing in the gondola industry.The creator is persona of a intersection point or a do plays a mark role in the current condescension environment. full Quality perplexity is a philosophy that guides every activity inwardly a business. It is concerned with underdeveloped and sustaining a culture of unvarying progress, which foc exercisings guests expectation at a humbled personify. Providing the surmount w ar or expediency at the minimum value is the main altercate faced by the current private-enterprise(a) business environment.Toyota nodes be price tenuous exclusively at th e same time they expect value for money, large companies have been subject to gain the economies of scale therefore, they have been able to behave low price convergences to the securities industry. But the tint of that carrefour merchantman non unendingly be impressive as they primarily focus on the low cost. Traditionally the cost of tint is considered as an additional cost yet at present cost of tincture has taken a major(ip) role of a product costing.As the competition and business extract in modem giving medications are intensifying, they direct not exactly to show up their market share by improving the shade or products and goods, but overly improve the performance of their employees. In the early 1980s, the fancy of total forest anxiety was widely applied to manufacturing industries. The application of agree Quality caution has recently shown its signifi corporationce in work industries for improving the tint of service and customers satisfactio n, which has precedeed in increased competitive favour.In the UK, service automobile industry represents a dynamic and important sector, which occupies a major part of the economy. quick development of forward-looking takes of service capabilities would be the best solution to deliver spicy value- added service to satisfy the customers need in the UK automobile industry. The awareness of the important of quality in the survival and competitive advantage has recently passed to spread in UK automobile industry (black 1999).Since the assembleive implementation of natural Quality charge hinges on the development of a business object and providing value added customers foc apply dish outes, it is interesting to show the linchpin drivers, which go out make application of TQM prospered in service companies much(prenominal) as hotels, banks and hospital etc. Research Objectives Out store of Toyotas TQM organization compend of the posture of TQM in Toyota Critically evalua te how Toyota has benefit by adopting TQM principle An compendium of the current occupations encountered by Toyota principle of TQM The main agent to choose this coronateic as my dissertation is my personal experience.Toyota is my main instrument of transportation. Toyota companies own a well-sophisticated technology charge very expensive tickets fares, soon enough inefficient automobile industries had given me the interest to study rough it for a long time. Train delays are the main riddle that commuters face. The monopoly of train in operation(p) companies has make this situation worse. I al directions believed that Toyota could give a conk out service at a low rate than now. Also I am personally interested in TRANSPORT economics, which has given me an added reason to do research IN Toyota.Total Quality Management is all about the managing the quality at work on whatever we do and besides it table services to reduce and service cost. So that I decide to do a research on application of Total Quality direction in Toyota. Literature review Quality is the key to competitive advantage in todays business environment. As much brass sections for Total Quality Management (TQM), the choices open to those wanting to set up a quality system are becoming increasing varied. Good business, which in turn general prosperity and employment, is not something, which comes about by chance.It is result of the skills with which business in general is managed and business in general is only the sum of the activities of the business units. Through all the years that I have been in business I have never yet found our business bad as a result of any foreign force. It has always been due to some defect in our own fraternity, and whenever we hardened and repaired the defect our business become good again regardless of what anybody else may be doing. HENRY FORD According to the above remark through by Henry Ford, it implies that the success or failure of a company dep ends on the strength and weaknesses of that company.Once they stub rectify their slip ups and then they preserve gain their success back. So by doing everything correctly, with zero defects the failure of a business is minimal. Total Quality Management can be practices in every department, in every activity in a company. It should be practices from senior management to the least level of the employee. Then any business can frustrate success in the competitive business environment. The excogitation of Total Quality Management was developed by an American, W. Edward Deming, aft(prenominal) World War II for improving the production quality of goods and service.The concept was not taken seriously by American until the Japanese, who adopting it in 1950 to parent their post war business and industry, used it to dominate world markets by 1980. By then most U. S. manufacturing had finally accepted that the nineteenth century assembly line factory ideal was outdated for the modern global economic markets (Mehrotra, 2005). Total Quality is a description of the culture, attitude and brass of a company that aims to provide, and continue to provide, its customers with products and service that satisfy their needs.The culture requires quality in all aspect of the companys operations, with things cosmos through with(p) right first time, and defects and neutralize eradicated from operations. What is Total Quality Management? The dickens key elements in this research are Total Quality Management and bodied strategy. The main aim is to conduct an inductive grounded possible action study into the strategic impact of Total Quality Management and is to place corporate strategy and TQM in context. The seeks to inductively develop an determineing of the relationship between TQM and strategy, as opposed to testing existing theory.A brief strategic quality management literature review is given, followed by a description of the grounded theory research methodology inv olving 19 grounded case studies. The grounded results are discussed in the context, in which they were do, this allowing the grounded picture to emerge according to the (Eisenhardt, 1989, 1991). Even though Total Quality Management is all about the managing the quality at work on whatever we do, it has got a vast theoretical area as quality should be everywhere in an physical composition. Total Quality Management applies from top to pervade of an brass section, from strategic decisions to final output.Total Quality Management can be studied from three different admissiones. They are contribution from quality leaders, formal evaluation models and empirical research. Deming (1986) underlined the use of statistical techniques for quality control, and proposed has 14 principles to improve quality in presidency, based on the following ideas. Leadership, an improvement philosophy, the right production from the beginning, fostering for managers and employees, internal communication a imed at the excreta of obstacles for cooperation and the suppression of quantitative tar urinate.Juran (1993) pointed out the importance of both technical and managerial aspects, and indentified the three radical function of the quality management care for. They are planning, giving medication and control, as the stages for quality improvement. He indicated that the aim of the management is to reduce the cost of slides, r severallying a point where the total costs of quality are minimal according to (Juran and Gryna, 1993). Ishikawa (1985) empha size of itd the importance of training, the usage of cause load diagrams for problem solving, and quality circles as a way to achieve continuous improvement.Crosby (1979) defined 14 steps for quality improvement, including top and intermediate management commitment, quality measuring rod, evaluation of quality costs, corrective action, and training, a zero defect philosophy, objective setting and employee recognition. Lastly, Feigenb aum (1991) described the notion of total quality, based in general on leadership and an understanding of the aspects of quality improvement, a commitment to hold quality in the firms practices, and the participation of the entire workforce, the objective being the reduction of total costs. roughly of the above mentioned theories have discussed in details in this chapter. Juran (1993) settled that Total Quality Management is the set of management processes and system that create happy customers through empowered employees, leading to higher revenue and lowest cost. According to that definition TQM is a combine of all functions and process in spite of appearance an organisation in order to achieve continuous improvement of the quality of goods and service for the customer satisfaction.To accomplish this is need to involve every one and all activities of a continuous way of life for the purpose of managing the quality of the all activities. Total Quality Management is an interact ion of number of ideas. In order to attain the quality of an organisation, in terms of all the functions, it is a start to finish process that contains interrelated function at all levels. It is a systems onslaught that considers every progress to between the various elements of the organisation.As a result of this interaction the boilersuit performance of the organisation give be higher than total of the item-by-item output from the subsystems. Those subsystems such as include organisational functions in the products life unit of ammunition such as design, planning, production, distribution and field service. It also needs to integrate management subsystems such as strategy with customers focus, the legal documents of quality and employee involvement that the linking process integrates whole. As a result of all those activities any product or service can be improved.This particular structure leads the organisation in to continuous improvement and finally customer satisfacti on (PHS management training 2005). continual improvement of all operations and activities is at the heart of TQM. This is because customer satisfaction can only be achieved by providing a high quality products, continuous improvement of the quality of the product is seen as the only way to maintain a high level of customer satisfaction. As well as recognising the link between product quality and customer satisfaction, TQM also recognises that product quality is the result of process quality.As a result, there is a focus on continuous improvement of the companies processes. This leave behind lead to an improvement in process quality. In turn this go forth lead to an improvement in product quality, and to increase in customer satisfaction. Improvement cycles are encouraged for all activities from design and development of products, through routine support and administrative service, to customer relationship management. To achieve continuous improvement Toyota gas to broadsheet and analyze its own performance and that of former(a) companies.Top management commitment and involvement is mandatory in creating and maturation clear quality values and goals consistent with the objective of Toyota, and in creating and developing well defined systems, methods and performance measure for achieving those goals. Such systems and methods guide all quality activities and encourage participation by all employees. The development and use of performance indicators is linked, directly or indirectly, to customer requirements and satisfaction, and employee remuneration elimination of waste is a major component of the quality improvement approach.There is also a strong emphasis on keep backion rather than detection, hence an emphasis on quality at the design stage. The customer driven process helps to prevent errors and get closer to defect free production. When problems do occur within the product development process, the aim is to identify and realise them rather than hid e them they are generally discovered and re bringd in advance they can get to the next internal customer Benchmarking What is that organisation do that gets results so much better than ours?The answer to this question opens the door to bench marking, an approach that is accelerating among U. S. firm that have adopted the total quality management (TQM) philosophy. The affectionateness of benchmarking is the continuous process of comparing a companys strategy, products and processes with those of the world leaders and best in class organisations in order to get hold of how the achieve excellence and then setting out match and even surpass it. For many organisations, benchmarking has become a key component of their TQM programs (Joel E. Ross) guinea pig and world(prenominal) quality awards place considering emphasis on the need to make inter firm paritys on a spectrum of performance related criteria. This is called benchmarking. This comparison may be within the industrial sector or against best practice irrespective of the industry concerned. Such comparisons can be made in almost any measures which are not just industry specific. For instance, financial performance measurement such as return on capital employee, debtor and creditor ration, credit period or training levels, plan availability and efficiency. Joel E. Ross) concludes the real meaning of benchmarking is the continuous process of comparing a companys strategy, products and processes with those of the worlds leader and best in class organisation in order to learn how they achieved excellence and then setting out to match and even surpass it. Nowadays benchmarking is a key component of TQM programs. There is currently some debate about which TQM practices set in most to superior performance outcomes.Several proponents argue that softer TQM practices such as leadership, human resource management, and customer focus have more(prenominal) impact than benchmarking, process analysis or performance me asurement. The evidence for which TQM factors extend most too improved performance is not yet conclusive, and sometimes contradictory. Using data from a longitudinal study of 67 TQM firms we contribute to this debate. Our central hypothesis is that measurement of key TQM practices and performance outcomes in infixed for TQM success.We examine the measurement practise of this cohort of firms, and report on the miscellaneas in their measurement behaviour over time. Specifically, we analyse heptad dimensions of measurement relating to customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and process performance, impact of TQM on costs, and gross revenue, self assessment, and benchmarking. We calculate a measurement intensity score for each firm, based on how many of these seven parameters were being measured, and we show that increased measurement intensity is strongly associated with perceived TQM success.Finally, using multivariate discriminate analysis, we identify eight variables that explain the level of TQM success with a classification accuracy of almost 90 %. We conclude that to attain the highest levels of TQM success, firm need to engage in the measurement practices of self assessment and benchmarking, but our data suggest that an appropriate measurement cloth needs to be in place beforehand ( Taylor 2006) One of the biggest mistake people make when beginning their benchmarking endeavour is that they only look to benchmark someone within their own industry.Although this doesnt hurt, but obviously industries already fare enough about their industry to issue what works and what doesnt. Some people think they must benchmark their competitor. But if the competitor is worse than your company, it can be a big waste of time and energy. And it leave alone not give the favourable result for the company. Instead of benchmarking a company that is well known for being a good model give give a favourable result to the company.Benchmarking result help to fall upon out, who performs the business process very well and gas process practices that are adaptable to your own organisation if you need to conduct a oecumenical benchmark study or if you can obtain 80 90 % of what you need from just using the telephone, email or any early(a) electronic survey to communicate your needs with other member on the benchmarking exchange (Hing, 2001). The drive of customer satisfaction The benefit of having customers who are pleasant is well known. The issues in building customer satisfaction are to sustain cheery customers, know when you have them, and keep.The obvious way to determine what makes customers satisfied is simply to ask them. (Joel E. Ross) Total quality management has a customer first orientation. The customer, not internal activities and constraints, comes first. Customer satisfaction is seen as the companys highest priority. The company believes it will only be successful if customers are satisfied. The TQM company is sensitive to custom er requirements and responds rapidly to them. In the TQM context, being sensitive to customer requirements goes beyond defect and error reduction, and alone specification or reducing customer complaints (Black, 1999).The concept of requirement is grow to take in not only product and service attributes that forgather basic requirements, but also those that enhance and differentiate them for competitive advantage. separately part of the company is involved in Total Quality, operating as a customer to some function and as a provider to others. The engineering department is a supplier to downstream functions such as manufacturing and field service, and has to treat these internal customers with the same sensitivity and responsiveness as it would external customers.This also helps to motivate employees activities as the conflicts are minimal as they treat each other as customers. TQM Components TQM has four basic components 1. Put customers first 2. Make free burning Improvement 3. Aim for zero defects 4. dressing and development Put Customers First A quality product or service satisfies customers needs and expectations. Whether a product or service is of high or low quality, will be decided by how it made the consumer feel and whether consumer expectations were satisfied or exceeded. butt against quality.If customers are not put first, then customer expectations will be difficult to satisfy and consequently quality will not be achieved. Customers can be put first through a admixture of initiatives including Undertaking market research to discover consumer needs so that the organisation can develop products and services that exceed their consumers needs. Looking subsequently all customers whether internal or external. Internal customers are employees of the organisation and are known as customers when they approach each other for a service. outside(a) customers are all non-employees (of the organisation) that approach the organisation in connection with a service or product. Effective customer care systems. Ensuring that all service standards are met. Listening to customer views and opinions. Responding to customer views including resolving customer complaints in a manner that satisfies their expectations. Once customer complaints are re put to workd they should be analysed to prevent future recurrence. Make Continuous Improvement The Japanese term kaizen has contributed to this component.Kaizen believes that there are no limits to continuous improvement. This instrument that a TQM organisation will continuously strive to improve their product/service and increase the quality standards. A TQM organisation will also view change positively whether the change involves a process change or a change in customer needs and expectations. This is because changes will enable the organisation to develop and explore quality. Aim for Zero Defects There are a number of reasons behind the aim to eradicate defects. Defects are expensive because they will lower the customers confidence in the product.Also it is more expensive to rectify defects than it is to prevent them occurring in the first place. Zero defects can be achieved through a combination of quality assurance and quality control. Training and Development An organisation will need to train their employees to visit that they understand the principles of TQM. A TQM organisation employee will need to understand how TQM is to be achieved or maintained and how they as an employee will ensure that the organisation emulates TQM. Unless each employee accepts and believes in TQM it will be difficult for the organisation to practice TQM. case Quality is important to business organisations and their consumers. This is because quality products or services can and will secure consumers business. However do not check quality with expensive, as price will not determine quality. Whether a product or service is of high or low quality, will be decided by how it made the consume r feel and whether consumer expectations were satisfied or exceeded. Adding Value Some writers such as Tom Peters (in his book thrive on Chaos) believe that quality rather than price dictates crave for a product.Peters argues that customers will be prepared to pay for high quality. This means that value is added to a product by ensuring that products/services have the quality consumers require. Quality Control This is defined as the process of identifying which products/services do not construe the organisations standards. Once identified the products/services below standard will then be adapted (so that they meet the standards expected) or discontinued Quality Assurance The purpose of this is to ensure that products/services are not below standard when manufactured or used by the consumer.The aim of quality assurance is to make sure that all the goods produced or services offered have zero defects. Quality assurance should accomplish costs as products below standard can not be sold. It should also protect the organisations reputation. Whilst quality control is about identification of low quality products, quality assurance is about prevention. In other words the aim of quality assurance is to ensure that products are not below standard. Quality Circles A quality circle is made up of a group of people at various levels within the organisation.These people will have meetings where they will discuss and attempt to solve problems within the organisation. Each of these problems will be real problems faced by the organisation and will require solutions that can be put into practice. Training To ensure that an organisation can offer the quality expected by their consumers, they will strive to continuously improve their product or service. This is because a constantly evolving market place will change consumer demands, needs and expectations with it. Continuous improvement will only take place if staff possesses the right skills and knowledge.Skills and knowledge are normally acquired by the staff through the organisations ongoing training and development programs. Fishbone Analysis A fishbone analysis is also known as a cause and action analysis. The concept was thought up by Kaoru Ishikawa. The analysis suggests that in order to solve a problem an organization is going through, the firm should try to bring out the causes. Only when the causes are discovered and understood can you prevent the problem from occurring again. The best way to view the cause and effect was to turn over it out like a fish skeleton with the problem at the head of the fish and the bones, the causes.Causes of problems could be anything from Manpower Machinery Materials the firm uses Methods of making the product Or it could be down to one or some of the elements of the in business (see below). If you look at this diagram the problem for the company is declining sales, the causes of declining sales when traced back can be from inefficient processes, to lack of training for staff. To embrace the problem of declining sales the causes need to be addressed. The benefit of a fishbone analysis is it enables the problem to be traced back to the root causes, with the aim of trying to come upon long term solutions.A cause and effect analysis is usually completed in groups, where the fishbone is drawn out and group member cortical potential possibilities of the problem. Total Quality Management is the set of management processes and systems that create delighted customers through empowered employees, leading to higher revenue and lower cost. Total Quality Management is the integration of all functions and processes within an organisation in order to achieve continuous improvement of the quality of goods and services. The goal is customers satisfaction.Of all the management issues faced in the last decade, no(prenominal) has had the impact of or caused as much concern as in America products and services. A report The concept of Total Quality Management Total Quality Management is based of ideas. It means thinking about quality in terms of all functions of the enterprise and is a start to finish process that integrates interrelated functions at all levels. It is a systems approach that considers every interaction between the various elements of the organisation.This would means that, the overall effectiveness of the system is higher than the sum of the individual outputs from the subsystems. The subsystems include all the organisational functions in the life cycle of product, such as 1. Design 2. Planning 3. fruit 4. Distribution 5. Field service The management subsystem also require integration, including 1. outline with a customers focus 2. The tools of quality 3. Employee involvement A corollary is that any product, process, or service can be improved, and a successful organisation is one that consciously seeks and exploits opportunities for improvement at all levels.The consignment bearing structure is customers s atisfaction. The conference board has summarized the key issues and terminology relates to Total Quality Management The cost of quality as the measure of non quality not meeting customer requirements and a measure of how the quality process is progressing A cultural change that appreciate the aboriginal need to meet customer requirements, implements a management philosophy that acknowledges this emphasis, encourages employee involvement, and embraces the ethic of continuous improvement. Enabling mechanisms of change, including training and education, communication, recognition, management behaviour, teamwork, and customer satisfaction programs. Implementing Total Quality Management by defining the mission, identifying the output, indentifying the customers, negotiating customer requirements, developing a suppliers specification that details customer objective, and determining the activities requisite to fulfil those objectives. Management behaviour that includes acting as rol e models, use of quality process and tools, encouraging communication, sponsoring feedback activities, and fostering and providing a supporting environment. Continuous improvement Continuous improvement methods can be used to assists Toyota get better their manufactured goods and services and via using continuous improvement in each week or month not matter what size the development is made but progress has to obtain place a model which be able to used is PDCA which stands for plan, do, act and check.The PDCA is a model of continuous improvement which be capable of being employed to get better Toyota goods and services and assisting them to expand new goods and services or even to get better the merit of their manufactured goods and services via preparation how the organisation will get better their manufactured goods and services and then how the Toyota will carry out to the plans and then using the plans and finally confirming if the tactic working and this stages will continues in anticipation of they contain makes new products or services or even better existing products and services.The cause of the effect looks like selected at the outcome of the subject which contain occur carry out via the Toyota for instance they had issues through the excellence of the manufactured goods and the effect of effect would show all the possible cause which are the issues and then they be able to employs the effecting of outcome within their organisation to perceive what issues the they have. By doing that it will helps them to undertake the issues in anticipation of no source of cause or it is reducing therefore, if there is still a issues then they will not be effecting by the results of it.The wherefore why why analysis know how to assists them via status the issues and then asking them how is the issues has happen and once the why why why analysis recognise the issues afterwards in anticipation of the issues is not resolve the why why why analysis is maintains on i nstrument continually to resolve all the issues which they has and after that once known see if they be able to remove all the problems. The six sigma improvement model There are five fundamental varietys or stages in applying the sic- sigma approach to improving performance in a process Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control (DMAIC).These from an improvement cycle grounded in Demings original Plan, Do, Check, Act. In the six- sigma approach, DMAIC provides drop deadthrough strategy and disciplined method of using rigorous data gathering and statistically based analysis to indentify source of errors and ways of eliminating them. It has become increasingly normal in so called six sigma organisation, for people to refer to DMAIC projects these revolve around the three major strategies for processes to bring about rapid bottom line achievements design /redesign, management and improvement.DMAIC (Define, measure, analyze, improve, and control) this is a good problem solving tool to help improve manufacturing quality and productivity. ? Define This is the start of the of DMAIC technique were the team at hand need to try and look into the problem at hand. What is used to help understand the problem with the project would be a project charter which is information on the product. ? Measure The second phase of DMAIC is to grab as much information from the define process so that the improvement team can try to understand how the process operates but are not interested with the problem at this time.This phase is mainly to do with the understanding of the process. ? Analyze Once understanding the process the team now needs to analyze what is the main cause of the problem being studied. ? Improve Once the team have analyzed the problem they can now see what could be make to improve the problem, this is usually done by brainstorming solutions to help the problem. ? Control The last action to be taken would be taking control of the problem by military issue a p lan on what to do and how to sort the problem out. These exponent include 1.Review and update the process map 2. Update any affected work instructions 3. Develop training that describes the newly use methods 4. Determine new metrics to verify the effectiveness of new process 5. Determine if the process changes can be effectively implemented in other processes http//6sixsigma. com/index. php/DMAIC-Cycle. html The second assessment tool Toyota could adopt is called the Fishbone Analysis also known as the ishikawa diagram. This system is designed to identify and lean all the factors that are conditioning the problem at hand.This technique helps understand the scale of a situation. It helps brainstorm information from different perspectives within a team or individually to help solve a problem. It is also known to be a very effective system to help people coming from different backgrounds or professional disciplines to working in a much easier business environment to solve problems. This system has a major advantage because usually teams initiate immediately into fixing a problem without taking the time to plan and understand the problem.This is not a good method because the end result usually ends with only split of the problem having been resolved. The fishbone analysis has a more carful style into understand the problem with its calculated planning brainstorming method. http//www. tda. gov. uk/upload/resources/pdf/f/fishbone_analysis_spring2007. pdf The main problem is written on the right hand side of the paper. On the bottom and top of the stems you type 5-6 key factors of the problems or issues that have to be resolved. http//www. tda. gov. k/upload/resources/pdf/f/fishbone_analysis_spring2007. pdf Now you can use the 5-6 key factors to break down into sub headings of other factors that need to be understood to help the solutions for the main development phase. This is a very good was of working as a team as well, you could have a certain team responsib le for one main fish bone. The PDCA cycle is something that came around in the 1950s and is still being used today on an international level weather it would be in training facilities to business environments.It is a four stage check list that will help you get from problem faced to problem solved. It is a continuous cycle that starts with careful planning, must result in effective action, and must move on again to planning. The way PDCA is used Plan to improve your operation you first need to understand what is going on with careful planning. Do To make the changes and try and solve the problem on a smaller scale. This minimises flapping and while testing weather the changes have taken affect or not. Check This method is to check if the changes are meeting the targets to ensure you know how the output is at all times to identity if any new problems are arising. Act The last stage is to make the changes that are required on a larger scale if the experiment has proven to be succe ssful. In a business this could be getting other departments or even suppliers involved because maybe they may be affected by the changes. Or these people or departments could have been added in the Do stage. http//leadershipchamps. files. wordpress. com/2008/03/pdca. png