The real secret to success with the A3 process: PDCA is actually CA-PDCA – and it is the CA that makes the PD work

When we learn about lean, problem solving and A3, we learn the Plan, Do, Check, Adjust cycle. But this sequence has an inherent contradiction. By starting with the Plan, you would already have, by definition, a solution – which we are also taught to avoid. Planning means that you have already agreed on a practical process to solve a problem or a need. To do this, you must first do something that we in North America added to the original PDCA approach, what we call “grasping the situation”. In fact, at Toyota, the Japanese leaders insisted that the PDCA cycle was Check, Adjust, Plan, Do, Check, Adjust, or CA-PDCA.

This means that you must first check the current situation to get a sense of what is happening, fully clarify the real problem and not proceed based on your first impression. Only then can you plan realistic countermeasures and get support for a plan to implement them. Once the countermeasure is in place, you must check what you accomplished and how it was done and decide how to use what you learned from what worked and what did not work to adjust your actions and plan the next PDCA.

Anyone who has ever made a plan and tried to carry it out knows that you usually need to solve many smaller problems to implement the countermeasures. In fact, at Toyota, there is an expression: “planning is absolutely critical; things never go according to plan”. The situation will almost never be exactly as you think when you make your plan, and the countermeasures you select do not always change the work the way you expect. Therefore, you must see and evaluate the execution process and the impact of the countermeasures and only then reflect on the differences between the actual results and what you expect. You also need to examine the actual execution process compared with your plan. Then you can identify and reflect on any differences to help you decide what actions you need to take next to reach your goal and how you need to approach planning and execution differently.

So where does CA-PDCA fit in? Checking and adjusting helps create the right plan for the next PDCA cycle. This means that before starting a PDCA cycle, you must clarify what is happening at the moment (grasp the situation). That way, you will be better informed to decide how to use what you have just learned to adjust your approach and make a plan to carry out the countermeasures. After implementing the countermeasures, you repeat the process, observing and evaluating the gaps between what you wanted to achieve and what you achieved, and deciding how to adjust your approach again for the next cycle.

Learning by doing

I took part in creating the first formal education on A3 problem solving for Toyota in North America. In Japan, Toyota leaders and managers use a coaching approach to teach and develop problem-solving and A3-writing skills. In the 1980s and 1990s, the company did not have a formal course to teach A3 and problem solving. I worked with Japanese managers and advisors at Toyota's plants in Kentucky and in Japan, where I was hired to document and try to understand the problem-solving process taught through coaching.

The senior human resources manager was also my coach, as I tried to understand A3 problem solving and writing well enough to teach it to other people. When I showed him my first A3, his response after frowning and twisting his mouth as he read was “do more”. That did not help much, so I asked: “more what?”. He replied: “more legs, more eyes, more ears” and walked away. It took a few minutes, but I finally understood what he was telling me. I needed to walk where the problem was occurring and spend much more time grasping the situation before trying to create an A3 about the problem and how to solve it.

When I went to the shop floor, I got in touch with the area manager who was supporting the work on this A3. He joined me while I was standing and observing. He said: “can you see now?”. I replied that yes, I could see.

“Do you see that?” he asked, pointing to an operator pulling the andon because he had not been able to complete his operation within takt time. I replied: “Well, no, I hadn't noticed or paid attention to that”. Then he asked: “Did you hear?”. And I said: “No, I didn't hear anything”. He replied: “Then go talk to the operators. Ask them what they know” (by this point, I was convinced that the Japanese must be using some secret network to tell each other that I was a very slow student).

Without telling me or showing me, my coaches were helping me realize how to grasp the situation. You look and see what is happening. Then you talk to the people who are doing the work. Their approach helped me understand something that, as a North American, I had not realized about Toyota's problem-solving method: at Toyota, problem solving does not happen only in your head. It starts with understanding the real conditions of what is happening in the problem situation firsthand. This is the CA of CA-PDCA.

Where is the gemba?

A subsequent lesson I learned is that the gemba is more than a place. There are people there who know things you need to know when you go and see. Grasping the situation means you must also ask and listen carefully to what they experience, know and think.

If you have been a lean thinker for some time, you have probably heard of Mr. Fujio Cho. You also know that he strongly advises managers and senior leaders to “go and see”, to go where the work is being done, the gemba, and see what is happening for themselves. Do not rely on reports. He also insists that once you learn something, you must ask why to reach a deep and nuanced understanding of how the work is done, how it should be done and what gets in the way of operators trying to perform standard work in their processes.

Mr. Cho, by the way, was the model of seeing and asking why. When he was at Toyota's plant in Kentucky, he would stand alone on the shop floor every day (on a gemba walk) observing and talking to the operators. In this way, he emphasized checking; that is, making sure he understood the current situation and the problems the plant needed to solve before deciding how to fix them.

In “Learning to See” and “Managing to Learn”, John Shook also emphasized the importance of first going to the gemba to see and ask questions and only then asking why what you saw happens. By applying the advice to see with your own eyes and critically question what you see in the A3 process, you learn:

• Why should you go and see? Because you cannot know what is happening in a problem situation (no matter how much experience you have) unless you have seen that specific problem in depth.
• Why ask why? Because you need to question what you are seeing. You need to make clear what you are seeing by asking: “why is this happening? What do I need to know about it? What do others here know that I don't?”.

Show respect

Mr. Cho and, later, Shook also emphasize to leaders that they must show respect for the people who are doing the work when they go to the gemba.

• Why show respect? In many ways, this is the most critical step in solving a problem. If you do not show respect for the people who do the work, they are unlikely to share what they know that you do not.

A situation that helped me see this occurred when I was working for a company that had seven small plants in the same small town. All the plants were easily accessible from where I was leading an A3 problem-solving workshop with the plant managers.

The first thing I asked the plant managers was to answer the following question: “which problem in your operation are you most concerned about, and what do you think is happening?”. I asked them to write the answer on a large sheet of paper and post it on the wall. Then I asked each of them to share their problem with the group. I asked each one, as they reported, whether they were sure that this was really the problem. They all said: “Yes, because I go to the gemba often and I know what is happening”.

So I challenged them to go to their plants and spend an hour there (first standing, observing for 15 to 20 minutes, and then asking questions of the people who work there). I advised them not to tell the operators anything, but to ask them what they were seeing, what was happening in that situation. Finally, I asked them to listen to what the operators said without interrupting.

At the next meeting, I asked each of the managers to stand next to the problem they said they were trying to solve and report what they had learned. One person reported that the problem was not what she had thought; the problem was very different, and what she had planned to do about it was not what was really needed. This exercise showed that nothing replaces a respectful conversation with the people who live with the problem, always asking why. They know things that no one else knows.

I suggest you keep three things in mind about A3 problem solving. First, it is based on the PDCA process, which means it is a cycle, not a hundred-meter dash to the solution, and you should not expect it to end in just one cycle if you understand continuous improvement. Second, the fact that the PDCA cycle is actually CA-PDCA means that grasping the situation (firsthand, as an automatic practice) at the beginning, during and after a problem-solving effort is the most important part of the process. Third, even going to see with your own eyes is no substitute for learning what the people who live where the problem is and live with the problem know and think about it.