WHY PLAN-DO-CHECK-ADJUST?

These materials are from Jeffrey K. Liker and the book, Developing Lean Leaders at All Levels.

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PDCA¾THE CORE OF LEAN THINKING

Some of us went through the quality revolution in the 1980s and 1990s. Back then we all became quality experts, and we learned somewhere in one of those quality courses the process of plan, do, check, act and we learned the basic problem-solving tools. We also learned how to make cause and effect diagrams.

So is this just old hat and the answer is in theory old hat. That is, I’m not telling anybody who's been around for a while something they never heard or learned. 

But in reality, what really happens is shown on the next slide. 

HOW TO DESTROY THE PDCA CYCLE

We get into a firefighting mode where we're doing and doing and doing and planning, checking and further acting or adjusting go out the window.

Why does that happen?

We learned it in a course. We know the right thing to do is PDCA, but when you actually check the process; and we watch what people are doing, they're spending almost all their time doing.

Why does that happen?

The firefighting mode turns out to be a vicious cycle, and you could even put that in system theory terms: It's a closed loop or it's spiraling down in a closed feedback loop where you're fixing the problem to adjust the system because the system is broken.

 Then another problem comes up and you're fixing that problem; in the meantime, the last problem was never really solved, so it will come back; eventually. Finally, as predicted, the problems keep snowballing, and you're constantly in the mode of fighting whatever problem pops up today, and the system is actually getting worse instead of getting better. 

Once you’re in that vicious cycle, you feel trapped because you don't have time to plan or check or adjust. You only have time to fight the fire of the day.

Now, once you get into a virtuous cycle, things start to run better; they're more stable, and that gives you the time to plan and check and adjust, and you have the luxury of giving these team leaders time to work offline instead of working in production. In this way they have the resources to dedicate to problem-solving. 

Then, as you solve problems the right way, things start getting better instead of worse, and that gives you the luxury to do Kaizen. We could have a self-improving, virtuous cycle or a self-destructive vicious cycle, and in many companies people are caught up in the self-destructive vicious cycles. 

George Trachilis: Jeff, what's your countermeasure for companies trapped in this vicious cycle? Do you get people thinking back to the Deming wheel? How would you as a consultant suggest a person make this type of transition? 

Jeff Liker: To answer that question in one word, it would be leadership. If you are in a destructive cycle, somebody has to take a leading role. Somebody has to stop it. It could be a supervisor who just says, “I've had it. I'm going home at night angrier and angrier, generally more frustrated and treating my family badly, and I'm miserable. I have finally decided that this is enough, and I've got to do something different.”

I’ve had people tell me; I read your book about Lean. I’ve also had people write me emails saying, I read your book and in my area, I started following the principles, and we (as a team) would stop and ask ‘what is the problem?.’

This was the starting point of the process. They would start to fix it. They would say; we used some of the Lean tools and things got better, and then that gives them more time to solve the real problems.

Then they would continue, “Now management is asking me, ‘What's different, why are you outperforming the rest of the organization?’ My peers are snickering and bad mouthing me because they think I'm brown-nosing senior management. What do I do? My management doesn't understand what I'm doing, and my peers are mad and aggravated, so they don't want to learn from me.”

It's a real difficult problem, so a better situation is when somebody more senior really has had enough and they say, “I'm not going to take it anymore. I'm going to change.”

Then, they can, in fact, change themselves; as you'll see in the leadership model, the first step to becoming a Lean leader involves self-development; you have to want to change. 

Now you can change only what you can control, and when people ask me the question what should I do? I don't have the supportive management. I don't have the support of my peers.

My answer is keep on doing what you're doing. Because if you continue to do that, you're probably going home happier and you're probably a better father or husband or wife and community member, and your life is better; why would you want to revert?

In the meantime, the longer you do this and the longer you get the results, the more likely it is that someone at the top will start to figure out that they should learn from you. This is something that often happens.

You need to start somewhere; it could be at the bottom; it could be at the middle; it could be at the top.

It is most effective to start where the top people will seriously agree that we need to change. Often that occurs as a result of an outside force. For example, we had the patent; we were charging 100% profit margin. Now our patent has run out, which begged for competition from competitors. Now we have a competitor who is charging 20% profit margin, and they're in lower cost areas. We’ve got to change or we're going to die, and that situation opens people up to learning. 

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