Why is PDCA important?
There is one process that I am continually trying to improve….the parenting process. We want our children to be curious, independent, ambitious and resilient to what life may throw at them. This is a process, that as parents, we all go into with different experiences but I believe that we can still apply the fundamentals of Deming’s PDCA (Plan – Do – Check – Adjust).
Why is PDCA fundamental to process improvement?
The PDCA framework works well in all types of organisations. It can be used to improve any process or product, by breaking them down into smaller steps or development stages, and exploring ways to improve each one.
So here is how it applied to our family framework!
Plan – At the start of 2021, as a family, we decided set some goals for the year ahead using the Big Life Journal as a framework. This planning phase took a while to work through our individual goals for relationships, health, projects, celebrations, trips and making a difference. We the collated our ideas and came up with our family goals for 2021!
Do – So on to the doing… As the year went by we set about our year, running our little family planning process every week, planning our weekends and activities. Just living live like any other family.
Check – Fast forward to last night, at our family meeting we decided to check-in on our Big Life Journal family goals for 2021. This was an interesting self reflection on the things that we had wanted to achieve but not quite done.
Adjust – ….and there we go the adjustment process, what changes can we make to ensure we meet our goals. Time to take action!
When to use the PDCA Process?
Use the PDCA cycle when:
- Starting a new improvement
- Developing a new or improved process, product, or service
- Defining a repetitive work process
- Planning data collection and analysis in order to verify and prioritise problems or root causes
- Implementing any change
- Working toward continuous improvement
