Life and Works of Quality Guru Joseph Juran | Quality Gurus

  • Born: 

    Dec 24, 1904

  • Died: Feb 28, 2008

Juran is best known for:

Juran’s Trilogy – Juran’s trilogy consists of Quality Planning, Quality Control, and Quality Improvement.
10 Steps of Quality Improvement – Juran proposed ten steps to quality improvement
Quality Control Handbook — Juran published the first edition of the Quality Control Handbook in 1951.
Cost of Quality – Juran defined the Cost of Quality as tangible and intangible costs.
Pareto Principle – Juran emphasized applying the Pareto Principle (80:20 rule) in the field of Quality Management.

KEY

Takeaways

  • Juran’s Quality Control Handbook is considered the most influential book in quality.

  • Quality improvements are often made through a series of incremental improvements.

  • The key to improving quality is identifying what causes 80% of problems and taking action to remove these causes.

A Brief Introduction:

Joseph M. Juran was a management consultant specializing in managing quality. He has authored hundreds of papers and 12 books, including Juran’s Quality control handbook, Quality Planning and Analysis, and Juran on Leadership for Quality.

 

Timeline

1951: Joseph Juran publishing Quality Control Handbook.
The Mid-50s: Like W. Edwards Deming, Joseph Juran travelled to Japan to conduct Quality Management seminars for top and middle-level executives.

Juran’s Trilogy

Juran’s Quality Trilogy is an approach to cross-functional management composed of three managerial processes: Planning, Control, and Improvement.

1. Quality Planning

Quality Planning is the activity of developing the products and processes required to meet customers’ needs. It involves:

  • Establish quality goals

  • Identify the customers- those who will be impacted by the efforts to meet the goal.

  • Determine the customers’ needs

  • Develop product features that respond to customers’ needs

  • Develop processes that can produce those product features

  • Establish process controls, and transfer the resulting plans to the operating forces

2. Quality Control

Quality Control is the activity of monitoring production activities to ensure that they are producing the correct product or service according to plan. It includes:

  • Monitoring the performance of the processes
  • Ensuring that all steps in the process are performed correctly
  • Corrective action when necessary

3. Quality Improvement

Quality Improvement is the activity of making changes to improve the process and raising quality performance to unprecedented levels (breakthrough). This may involve:

  • Establish the quality improvement infrastructure

  • Identify the improvement projects

  • For each project, establish a project team with clear responsibility

  • Provide the resource, motivation, and training needed by the team

 

The term “Trilogy” is associated with which quality guru?

Joseph Juran

Cost of Quality

The cost of quality (or the cost of not getting it right the first time) should be recorded and analyzed and classified into failure costs, appraisal costs and prevention costs.
1. Failure Cost
Scrap, rework, corrective actions, warranty claims, customer complaints and loss of custom
2. Appraisal Cost
Inspection, compliance auditing, and investigations
3. Prevention Cost
Training, preventive auditing, and process improvement implementation

 

Pareto Principle

Vilfredo Pareto was an Italian economist who observed that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Juran applied his observations to business management and economics.

Juran emphasized that 80% of problems are created by 20% of causes. Organizations should identify the vital few (20%) causes and take action to remove them from the system.

 

Quality Improvement – 10 Steps

Juran proposed ten steps to quality improvement:

  • Build awareness of the need and opportunity to improve

  • Set goals for that improvement

  • Create plans to reach the goals

  • Provide training

  • Conduct projects to solve problems

  • Report on progress

  • Give recognition for success

  • Communicate results

  • Keep score

  • Maintain momentum