A PDCA cycle for Continuous Improvement

PDCA is a management technique developed by Charles Deming for continuous improvement of processes (or products, or services, etc.), I read somewhere that he always called it the "Shewhart cycle" and that he based his idea on his work.

The Deming Cycle is the scientific method for process improvement, you may think that “yeah, but isn’t it common sense?” You might be right, the cycle is pretty logical, but you didn’t theorized it, you didn’t make it common sense.

The steps for continuous improvement are:

PLAN: Establish the objectives and processes necessary to deliver results in accordance with the expected output (the target or goals).

DO: Implement the plan, execute the process. Collect data for charting and analysis in the following steps.

CHECK: Study the actual results and compare against the expected results.

ACT: Correct any significant differences between actual and planned results or standardize if the result was as expected.

This has worked for decades and who am I to question it, but, as one of the names of this cycle states, this a CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT CYCLE. This means that you are improving something that already exists so (for me) you cannot start with planning; you would have to check first to see what the differences are (or if there is even a problem)

First, let’s define what a problem is:

A problem is any result that is not what expected, I always find diagrams very useful for understanding.

So, for a continuous improvement process, my proposed cycle would be like this: