Question: who is the originator of the plan-do-check-act model of performance improvement?
Answer: W. Edwards Deming

PDCA was made popular by W. Edwards Deming, who is considered by many to be the father of modern quality control; however, he always referred to it as the "Shewhart cycle".  Later in Deming's career, he modified PDCA to "Plan, Do, Study, Act" (PDSA) because he felt that "check" emphasized inspection over analysis. The PDSA cycle was used to create the model of know-how transfer process, and other models.