Tag Archives: PDSA

Interview on PDSA, Deming, Strategy and More

Posted on May 8, 2014 by John Hunter

Bill Fox interviewed me and has posted part one of the interview on his web site: Predicting Results in the Planning Stage (sorry, the link has been hijacked to forward to an unrelated page [so obviously I removed the link], I have posted the interview which can now be reached here): Bill: John, what is your best process improvement strategy or tactic that has worked well for you or your clients? John: I would say the PDSA improvement cycle and … Continue reading →

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Resources for Using the PDSA Cycle to Improve Results

Posted on October 28, 2013 by John Hunter

Using the PDSA cycle (plan-do-study-act) well is critical to building a effective management system. This post provides some resources to help use the improvement cycle well. I have several posts on this blog about using the PDSA cycle to improve results including: keys to the effective use of the PDSA cycle Richard Feynman Explains the PDSA Cycle Tom Nolan on the PDSA cycle The authors and consultants with Associates for Process Improvement have the greatest collection of useful writing on … Continue reading →

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Jeff Bezos: Innovation, Experiments and Long Term Thinking

Posted on September 4, 2013 by John Hunter

Jeff Bezos, bought the Washington Post. He has long showed a willingness to take a long term view at Amazon. He is taking that same thinking to the Washington Post: In my experience, the way invention, innovation and change happen is [through] team effort. There’s no lone genius who figures it all out and sends down the magic formula. You study, you debate, you brainstorm and the answers start to emerge. It takes time. Nothing happens quickly in this mode. … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Customer focus, Innovation, Process improvement | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Richard Feynman Explains the PDSA Cycle

Posted on May 17, 2012 by John Hunter

Ok, really Richard Feynman Explains the scientific method. But his thoughts make the similarity between the PDSA cycle and the scientific method obvious. 1) Plan, hypothesis. You make a guess about a theory (in using the PDSA cycle this step is often missed, while in the scientific method this is of the highest priority). You make a prediction based on that theory. 2) Do the experiment 3) Study the results If the results disprove the theory you were wrong. If … Continue reading →

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Keys to the Effective Use of the PDSA Improvement Cycle

Posted on March 6, 2012 by John Hunter

The PDSA improvement cycle was created by Walter Shewhart where Dr. Deming learned about it. An improvement process is now part of many management improvement methods (A3 for lean manufacturing, DMAIC for six sigma and many other modifications). They are fairly similar in many ways. The PDSA cycle (Plan, Do, Study, Act) has a few key pieces that are either absent in most others processes of greatly de-emphasized which is why I prefer it (A3 is my second favorite). The … Continue reading →

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Agile PDSA

Posted on September 16, 2008 by John Hunter

Dr. Deming encouraged the use of the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle to improve. Agile Management encourages a similar mindset – to test out ideas in practice and adapt quickly. A key to both strategies is to quickly iterate over possible solutions. Tesco provides an example of this strategy: This was our first opening since we took our 12 week pause, after we had opened 61 stores at breakneck speed. We used that time to reflect on what customers had told us they … Continue reading →

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Deming Institute Conference: Tom Nolan

Posted on October 16, 2006 by John Hunter

I attended the annual W. Edwards Deming Institute conference this weekend: it was quite good. Tom Nolan [the broken link was removed] lead off the conference with: Developing and Applying Theory to Get Results. He discussed the theory of knowledge: how we know what we know. See my attempt to introduce the idea of the theory of knowledge within Deming’s management system. It is probably the least understood of Deming’s four areas of profound knowledge, the others areas are: knowledge … Continue reading →

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Evolution of the PDSA Cycle

Posted on July 17, 2006 by John Hunter

Evolution of the PDSA Cycle by Ron Moen and Cliff Norman. Another historical article that explores the growth of management improvement concepts – this time the PDSA improvement cycle. via: Deming Electronic Network [the broken link was removed] See also: Improvement Handbook by Gerald J. Langley, Kevin M. Nolan, Clifford L. Norman, Lloyd P. Provost and Thomas W. Nolan. Deming on Management Variation Through the Ages by Lloyd Provost and Clifford Norman

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