Continuous quality improvement

Continuous quality improvement is an important part of the long-term monitoring and improvement of the performance of the many systems. It also involves a feedback cycle of data collection and analysis.

Example: Shelf life of milk in a supermarket

A supermarket sells thousands of bottles of milk each week, but occasionally gets complaints from customers about milk quality. How should this problem be addressed?

The statistical process in other contexts

In many other contexts, a similar cycle is used to obtain 'improvements' in the system. For example, biologists may want to increase numbers of an endangered native bird. Why are numbers decreasing? Predators, disease, habitat, ...?

The Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle can be used to determine reasons for the decline and obtain remedies.

A Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle underlies most practical applications of Statistics.