Change Management Using PDCA – The Plan Step and Building on Success

Speaker 1: (00:05)
In the last session, we talked about the plan–do–check–act cycle and the fourth element, the act step, and putting necessary controls in place to prevent the backsliding. So what we want to do is to put this wedge in place once we get an improvement to make sure we don’t backslide. Sustainability is ensuring that we don’t go back to previous conditions. And again, our process isn’t an improvement if we can’t sustain it. So once we get to this higher level, then we want to go back and we want to go to our PDCA cycle again and assess the current situation and build on the success of the previous improvement. So now we want to look for the next level of improvement that’s going to get us to the next level of productivity. So once we assess that situation, then we again go back to our PDCA.

Speaker 1: (01:00)
We assess and identify things that are going to give us system improvement performance, not efficiency improvements, not cost reductions, but improvement of the system performance. So then when we identify that, we move up the step to the next level of performance. And again, the process improvement should improve our KPIs. If it’s not improving the KPIs for the organization, then isn’t really an improvement. So then once we go through that process again, again, it’s putting that wedge in place so that we can sustain that game. And we systematically go through the PDCA cycle again, and again, and again, each time getting step improvements and overall system performance.