The PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle, kaizen events, A3 problem-solving methodology, and what it actually takes to build a continuous improvement culture that outlasts its launch.
Every tool this program has covered — lean's waste elimination, Six Sigma's DMAIC, SPC's control charts, quality engineering's FMEA — is most powerful as part of a sustained discipline of finding and removing the next problem, not a one-time project that closes out. This module builds the PDCA cycle as the basic unit underneath essentially every improvement method in this program, kaizen events as a focused, time-boxed way to apply it intensively, A3 problem-solving as a disciplined one-page format, and the specific mechanisms — chiefly leadership behavior — that determine whether continuous improvement survives past its first year.
By the end of this module you should be able to explain why an idea system that never visibly closes out submissions is worse than having no idea system at all, and why a kaizen event is the wrong tool for a problem whose root cause isn't understood yet.