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Industrial Engineering & Manufacturing vocabulary · Process Improvement

PDCA cycle

Meaning in industrial engineering & manufacturing, with examples

nounCommon term

In industrial engineering & manufacturing, PDCA cycle means: A four-step improvement loop: Plan a change, Do it on a small scale, Check the results, then Act by making it standard or trying again.

In Turkish: PUKÖ döngüsü, Planla-Uygula-Kontrol Et-Önlem Al döngüsü, Deming döngüsü

How it is used

Also called the Deming cycle or Shewhart cycle. It is the logic behind ISO management system standards and many improvement methods. People talk about going around the PDCA cycle and closing the loop. A version with Study instead of Check (PDSA) is also used.

Example sentences

  1. We're in the Check step of the PDCA cycle: the new settings have run for two weeks.

  2. Every improvement on the board follows the PDCA cycle, and the color shows which step it is in.

Common collocations

  • PDCA approach
  • go around the PDCA cycle
  • Plan-Do-Check-Act
  • close the loop
  • continuous improvementAn ongoing effort to make products, processes and services better through many small, regular changes rather than one big change. Often shortened to CI.
  • kaizenA Japanese word for 'change for the better', used for small, steady improvements made by everyone, and for a short, focused improvement event.
  • DMAICThe five-phase roadmap of a Six Sigma project: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control.
  • corrective actionAn action taken to remove the cause of a problem or nonconformance so that it does not happen again, not just to fix the affected parts.

More terms: Process Improvement

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