Understanding quality and seeking to improve it is arguably the core purpose behind undertaking process improvements. Hence the creation of the Deming cycle.

But where did this philosophy of process improvement come from?

One key person is William Edwards Deming – sometimes referred to as Edward W. Deming. He’s principally a statistician, but one could even call him a philosopher of science.

Deming’s goal was to reapply the scientific method to business processes, and has left us with two main variants of his thinking: PDSA and PDCA.

In this article we’ll outline:

• What the Deming cycle is, with its history
• How to apply the Deming cycle to improve your business processes
• The important distinction between PDSA and PDCA
• How PDSA is employed in the medical field

Deming’s approach is not just about improving processes, but about improving a whole business.

In a recent meta-study from the British Medical Journal, researchers found only 2 out of 73 studies had applied PDSA in a way which fully met criteria. Commenting:

To progress the development of the science of improvement, a greater understanding of the use of improvement methods, including PDSA, is essential to draw reliable conclusions about their effectiveness.

And that’s why we’re writing this article!

If the United Nations Environment Programme is to be taken seriously, the current generation is the last generation with a realistic chance of kick-starting the processes necessary to halt or reverse the looming global crisis of climate change.

“We are clearly the last generation that can change the course of climate change, but we are also the first generation with its consequences,” Kristalina Georgieva, the CEO of the World Bank.

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“Global stock markets post biggest falls since the 2008 financial crisis.” – The Guardian, 9th of March 2020

Business risk can come out of no where at any time.

It was a Tuesday morning and my phone buzzed me out of my groggy, lethargic state, flashing open the above notification. The Coronavirus had hit businesses and our economy hard, potentially costing 2.7 trillion globally.

A viral risk, that went viral. Was something like this not foreseeable?

In this Process Street article, we turn our attention to the concept of business risk. As we write this article, the corona crisis is unfolding. We were warned about the risk of a virus outbreak but it appears we weren’t as prepared for it as we could have been.

But viruses are not the only risk we face. The 2020 Global Risk Report from the World Economic Forum (WEF) highlights a host of other risks, which we’ll turn our attention to in this article.

To get started, click on the relevant subheaders below to spring to that section. Alternatively, scroll down to read all we have to say regarding the concept of business risk.

• Confront business risk with a risk management process
• Business risk: What is it and why risk items need to be identified
• Business risks: Global business risks from the World Economic Forum
• What is a risk management process and how do we use it?
• Incorporating the Global 2020 Risk Report results within your risk management process
• Risk item 1: Extreme weather, cause, and economic effect
• Risk item 2: Climate action failures, cause, and economic effect
• Risk item 3: Biodiversity loss, cause, and economic effect
• Risk assessment: Why sustainability is part of a good risk assessment
• Sustainability risk management: How you can document your processes with Process Street

Belts and braces on, let’s jump to it!
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Procurement management directly impacts an organization’s bottom-line and can be responsible for 70% of revenue. With this in mind, it’s important to get procurement right.

The world of procurement has undergone tremendous changes in the past couple of years. Changes of particular importance when thinking about procurement management include:

• Digital transformation: With 85% of organizations believing that this digital transformation will change the way they deliver services over the next 3-5 years.
• Thinking about suppliers beyond price: With a greater focus on supplier synergies. The importance of supplier visibility regarding the procurement steps is realized.
• Moving to effective change management: Organizations focus on a smooth change management plan, with procurement leaders agreeing change management is the biggest roadblock to achieving procurement goals.
• Risk management and preparing the unexpected: With transparent procurement systems reducing risk exposure. Only 65% of procurement leaders have little or no visibility in their supply chain.

With this in mind, in this Process Street article, we explain how you can create a procurement management solution that leverages a digital transformation (using Process Street as your procurement management software), thinks about suppliers beyond price, and incorporates effective risk and change management.

Click on the relevant subheader below to jump to your section of choice. Alternatively, scroll down to read all we have to say on procurement management.

• What is procurement? A re-cap of the basics
• Examples of procurement gone wrong
• What is procurement management (+ benefits)
• Procurement management best practice
• Procurement management plan in 7 steps

Let’s jump to it!
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What is Genchi Genbutsu? It’s part of the Toyota Production System conceptual toolkit. And it works.

It’s one thing to identify errors or weaknesses in your business, but it’s another to actually fix and improve them.

The crucial step in fixing an error is deciding the right solution to implement. Pick the wrong one and you create a different problem.

When you’re in a massive company, you want to make sure you’re picking the right solution before you start implementing across a whole corporate structure.

Because of this, investigating the problem as thoroughly as possible should be paramount. And this leads us to Genchi Genbutsu.

In this Process Street article, we’re going to look at:

• What is Genchi Genbutsu?
• How Toyota revitalized their minivan thanks to a road trip
• 3 academic approaches to guide your investigation

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ISO 9001 certification is an international standard for defining a quality management system (QMS). It outlines various criteria (or standards) to define quality management principles such as focusing on the customer, optimizing leadership and management within the organization, improving and fine-tuning internal processes, and general methods of continuous improvement.

Let’s break down each of the components of and ISO 9001 certification.

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British Airways chief executive described the incident as “catastrophic” as 800 flights were canceled and 75,000 travelers were affected.

Flight compensation website flightright.com estimated that British Airways would have to pay around €61m to passengers for refunds alone under EU legislation. Add to this the cost of reimbursing angry passengers for unexpected hotel stays and other inconveniences, and the total financial damage to British Airways has been estimated at £100m.

Why? Someone turned their data center off and on again.

The entire airline was down for almost 2 days. This wasn’t a natural disaster, it was a process failure.

In this article, we’ll explore how to spot process failures before they occur using a system called Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA). We’ll assess an overview and then delve in deeper to ground our understanding and include a premade Process Street FMEA template to help you run your own assessments in future.

In this article we’ll cover:

• Your free FMEA (Failure Modes and Effects Analysis) template
• FMEA? What is Failure Mode and Effects Analysis?
• When do we use FMEA?
• Conducting and documenting Failure Mode and Effect Analysis: A user’s guide
• What happened to British Airways?
• Why did it happen?
• How can FMEA help us prevent this happening again?

Growing up on an island, my favorite food was in abundance: Fish.

However, whenever I ate at a restaurant there was always a voice in the back of my head wondering if the fish had been mismanaged and, due to that mismanagement, I’d get sick.

My anxiety around food safety wasn’t exactly unfounded. Fish is the most commonly impacted food group when it comes to disease outbreaks, and a quarter of a million people in the U.S. get sick each year from contaminated fish. And when it comes to all food groups, the CDC estimates that a whopping 1 in 6 Americans (which equates to 48 million people) become ill each year due to foodborne illness.

However, by not coming at food safety with a HACCP approach – and by creating and following a solid HACCP plan – these figures could be far, far higher.

Ergo: HACCP is important and, as a business in the food industry, you can even be required by law to go about HACCP properly.

To help you out, in this post I’ll discuss what HACCP and a HACCP plan are in detail, HACCP’s history, the benefits, and how Process Street can help you with all-things HACCP and food safety.

Just read through the following sections:

• What is HACCP (and what is a HACCP plan)?
• The incredible history of HACCP
• The benefits of HACCP (and having a HACCP plan)
• Use Process Street for all-things HACCP!

Let’s swim through the rest of the post! 🐟

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Would you eat a McDonalds Big Mac that was out-of-date, had been dropped on the floor, and made with a stranger’s bare hands?

No! Me neither.

Unfortunately, that’s what thousands of people in China, unknowingly, did.

Back in 2015, the Chinese meat suppliers for McDonald’s were secretly filmed and caught:

“Handling meat and chicken with their bare hands, taking meat that had fallen on the floor and adding it back on to the production line…and forging production dates on beef patties.” – ET2C, Lessons on the Importance of Quality Control Checks

Around 4,300 McDonalds beef patties were tested and found to be out-of-date and contaminated with bacteria.

As a result, over 2,000 McDonald’s outlets across Asia were dramatically affected. The reputation of McDonald’s and their meat supplier was irreversibly damaged, and McDonald’s saw a 7.3% drop in sales.

McDonald’s was definitely not ‘lovin it’.

If only they’d used Enterprise Quality Management Software (EQMS) to regulate their supplier’s meat handling processes and control the quality of the produce they were delivering.

Companies who use EQMS to manage quality, experience fewer product quality issues (less than 1%), and improve their productivity by 20%.

Keen to find out more? Join me in this Process Street post as we run through the following:

• EQMS: What is it & how does it work?
• EQMS: Who uses it?
• EQMS: Is it just for regulated organizations?
• EQMS: What are its downfalls?
• EQMS: Is there another option that’s quick to implement & easy to use?

Let’s make our way through the golden arches and get started! 🍟🍟🍟🍟
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Joseph Juran, the Architect of Quality, paved the way for the active pursuit of quality in Business with the Juran Trilogy.

The Juran Trilogy redefined quality management; reducing chronic defects and the costs associated below a 20% industry expectation.

The Juran Trilogy has been shown to give benefits across multiple parameters, increasing productivity, reducing cycle-times, improving human safety, and reducing product failure rates – with a 80% reduction in some cases.

For us as Process Street, the Juran Trilogy is one of our favorite tools for improving business operations. It’s a straightforward methodology that brings results.

Learn how to apply the Juran Trilogy for your business, and improve the quality of operations. Click on the relevant subheader below to jump to your section of choice, alternatively scroll down to read all we have to say:

• What is the Juran Trilogy?
• Using the Juran Trilogy for quality control: Quality planning, control and improvement
• Implementing the Juran Trilogy using Process Street
• Juran Trilogy examples: Quality improvement in the real world

Let’s get started!