Management Textbooks Boundless Management Control Bureaucratic and Quality Control Tools and Techniques
Management Textbooks Boundless Management Control
Management Textbooks Boundless Management
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Management
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Bureaucratic Control

The quality control cycle improves processes through a continuous cycle of planning, doing, checking, and acting.

Learning Objective

  • Use the four central components of the quality control cycle as a quality control (QC) tool

Key Points

    • The quality control cycle is a repeating cycle that evolves around the production process. In the PDCA model, this incorporates four elements: Plan, Do, Check, and Act.
    • This process is essential for products developed through continuous production.
    • The quality control cycle does not stop after a process has been improved. Once a product is updated, the cycle begins again for the updated product, which is subjected to the same rigorous quality control process.

Terms

  • quality control

    An activity, such as inspection or testing, introduced into an industrial or business process to ensure sound processes and products.

  • continuous improvement

    An ongoing effort to make products, services, or processes better.

  • PDCA

    The cycle of Plan-Do-Check-Act, four-step problem solving process typically used in quality control.

Full Text

The Quality Control Life Cycle

The quality control life cycle is an ongoing cycle of planning, monitoring, assessing, comparing, correcting, and improving products or processes. It is designed to improve the quality of a product or process through continuous reinvention. Quality control is used to develop systems that ensure that the goods and services customers receive meet or exceed their expectations.

Quality control both verifies the delivery of good quality and identifies gaps and failures that need to be addressed within the process. Ultimately, it is a process that continuously evolves within the production process.

PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act)

PDCA (plan–do–check–act or plan–do–check–adjust) is a four-step management method used in business to control and continuously improve processes and products. It is also known as the Deming circle/cycle/wheel, Shewhart cycle, control circle/cycle, or plan–do–study–act (PDSA). Another version of this PDCA cycle is OPDCA. The added "O" stands for observation or, as some versions say, "Grasp the current condition."

PDCA cycle

Plan, Do, Check, Act

The Four Steps

  1. Plan: In this step of the quality control cycle, a business establishes the objectives and processes necessary to deliver results in accordance with the expected output (the target or goals).
  2. Do: In this step, a business implements the plan, executes the process, and makes the product. It also collects data for charting and analysis to be used in the following "check" and "act" steps.
  3. Check: A business then compares the actual result against the expected result to find any differences.
  4. Act/Adjust: After comparing results, a business takes corrective actions on any significant differences between actual and expected results. In this step, the business analyzes the differences to determine their root causes, then determines where to apply changes that will improve the process or product.

It is important to keep in mind that this quality control process is continuous and specifically designed to improve the quality of business processes on an ongoing basis. The theory underlying this is the scientific method, where observations are made and hypotheses generated, which are then tested in the next cycle.

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