When we think of plan-do-check-act (PDCA), W. Edwards Deming might spring to mind… and Walter Shewhart, maybe Kaoru Ishikawa as well. But the thinking that results from PDCA today can most always be traced to Shewhart’s 1939 book, Statistical Method From the Viewpoint of Quality Control; these underpinnings themselves had underpinnings.

Insight into the history of PDCA is offered by an article titled “Circling Back” (Ronald D. Moen and Clifford L. Norman, Quality Progress, November, 2010). According to Moen and Norman, the history of PDCA can be traced back through a lineage of pragmatic and scientific thinkers: C. I. Lewis, John Dewey, Charles Pierce, William James, Sir Francis Bacon, and Galileo—the father of modern science. In a sense, when Shewhart arrived at the beginnings of PDCA, he was applying scientific method to the production methods of his day.

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