Oct 3 2014

My 1st Friday Favorite Guru Series: Joseph M. Juran

We begin the First Friday of the month, October 2014, with another of my Favorite Gurus – the late Joseph M. Juran.

Joseph M. Juran

Introduction

Joseph M. Juran made many contributions to the field of quality management in his 70+ active working years. His book, the Quality Control Handbook, is a classic reference for quality engineers. He revolutionized the Japanese philosophy on quality management and in no small way worked to help shape their economy into the industrial leader it is today. Dr. Juran was the first to incorporate the human aspect of quality management which is referred to as Total Quality Management.

The process of developing ideas was a gradual one for Dr. Juran. Top management involvement, the Pareto principle, the need for widespread training in quality, the definition of quality as fitness for use, the project-by-project approach to quality improvement–these are the ideas for which Juran is best known, and all emerged gradually.

TQM – All the Rage in the 1980s

I was exposed to the teachings of Dr. Juran while at MTEC – Motorola’s Training & Education Center. Along with the work of Geary A. Rummler and Neil Rackham.

Motorola was very big into Quality with a capital Q – in 1981/1982 when I was there. Due to my continuous exposure to these thinkers and doers and their tools and techniques I was on a Fast Track of Circumstance. I was integrating and combining the teachings from the quality movement with the teaching from HPT – Human Performance Technology – from my professional home since 1979 – NSPI – now ISPI – the International Society for Performance Improvement on a day-to-day basis.

What I learned indirectly from this guru or gurus – as I never met nor was in the presence of Dr. Juran – is best summed up from the follow excerpt from Wikipedia. As they say, I couldn’t have written it better myself…

Pareto principle

In 1941, Juran stumbled across the work of Vilfredo Pareto and began to apply the Pareto principle to quality issues (for example, 80% of a problem is caused by 20% of the causes). This is also known as “the vital few and the trivial many”. In later years, Juran preferred “the vital few and the useful many” to signal the remaining 80% of the causes should not be totally ignored.

Management theory

When he began his career in the 1920s, the principal focus in quality management was on the quality of the end, or finished, product. The tools used were from the Bell system of acceptance sampling, inspection plans, and control charts. The ideas of Frederick Winslow Taylor dominated.

Juran is widely credited for adding the human dimension to quality management. He pushed for the education and training of managers. For Juran, human relations problems were the ones to isolate and resistance to change was the root cause of quality issues. Juran credits Margaret Mead’s book Cultural Patterns and Technical Change for illuminating the core problem in reforming business quality.^[9] He wrote Managerial Breakthrough, which was published in 1964, outlining the issue.

Juran’s concept of quality management extended outside the walls of the factory to encompass non-manufacturing processes, especially those that might be thought of as service related. For example, in an interview published in 1997 he observed:

The key issues facing managers in sales are no different than those faced by managers in other disciplines. Sales managers say they face problems such as “It takes us too long…we need to reduce the error rate.” They want to know, “How do customers perceive us?” These issues are no different than those facing managers trying to improve in other fields. The systematic approaches to improvement are identical. … There should be no reason our familiar principles of quality and process engineering would not work in the sales process.

The Juran trilogy

Juran was one of the first to write about the cost of poor quality. This was illustrated by his “Juran trilogy”, an approach to cross-functional management, which is composed of three managerial processes: quality planning, quality control and quality improvement. Without change, there will be a constant waste, during change there will be increased costs, but after the improvement, margins will be higher and the increased costs get recouped.

From Wikipedia

Joseph Moses Juran (December 24, 1904 – February 28, 2008) was a Romanian-born American engineer and management consultant. He is principally remembered as an evangelist for quality and quality management, having written several influential books on those subjects.

He was the brother of Academy Award winner Nathan H. Juran.

Early life

Juran was born in Brăila, Romania, one of the six children born to a Jewish couple, Jakob and Gitel Juran; they later lived in Gura Humorului. He had three sisters: Rebecca (nicknamed Betty), Minerva, who earned a doctoral degree and had a career in education, and Charlotte. He had two brothers: Nathan H. Juran and Rudolph, known as Rudy. Rudy founded a municipal bond company In 1912, he emigrated to America with his family, settling in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Juran excelled in school, especially in mathematics. He was a chess champion at an early age, and dominated chess at Western Electric. Juran graduated from Minneapolis South High School in 1920.

In 1924, with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Minnesota, Juran joined Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works. His first job was troubleshooting in the Complaint Department. In 1925, Bell Labs proposed that Hawthorne Works personnel be trained in its newly developed statistical sampling and control chart techniques. Juran was chosen to join the Inspection Statistical Department, a small group of engineers charged with applying and disseminating Bell Labs’ statistical quality control innovations. This highly visible position fueled Juran’s rapid ascent in the organization and the course of his later career.

Personal life

In 1926, he married Sadie Shapiro. Joseph and Sadie met in 1924 when his sister Betty moved to Chicago and he and Sadie met her train; in his autobiography he wrote of meeting Sadie “There and then I was smitten and have remained so ever since”. They were engaged in 1925 on Joseph’s 21st birthday. 15 months later they were married. They had been married for nearly 82 years when he died in 2008.

Joseph and Sadie raised four children (3 sons and 1 daughter.) Robert, Sylvia, Charles, and Donald. Robert was an award-winning newspaper editor, and Sylvia earned a doctorate in Russian literature.

Department Chief

Juran was promoted to department chief in 1928, and the following year became a division chief. He published his first quality-related article in Mechanical Engineering in 1935. In 1937, he moved to Western Electric/AT&T’s headquarters in New York City.

As a hedge against the uncertainties of the Great Depression, he enrolled in Loyola University Chicago School of Law in 1931. He graduated in 1935 and was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1936, though he never practiced law.^[6]

During the Second World War, through an arrangement with his employer, Juran served in the Lend-Lease Administration and Foreign Economic Administration. Just before war’s end, he resigned from Western Electric, and his government post, intending to become a freelance consultant.^[7]He joined the faculty of New York University as an adjunct professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering, where he taught courses in quality control and ran round table seminars for executives. He also worked through a small management consulting firm on projects for Gilette, Hamilton Watch Company and Borg-Warner. After the firm’s owner’s sudden death, Juran began his own independent practice, from which he made a comfortable living until his retirement in the late 1990s. His early clients included the now defunct Bigelow-Sanford Carpet Company, the Koppers Company, the International Latex Company, Bausch & Lomb and General Foods.

Japan

The end of World War II compelled Japan to change its focus from becoming a military power to becoming an economic one. Despite Japan’s ability to compete on price, its consumer goods manufacturers suffered from a long-established reputation of poor quality. The first edition of Juran’s Quality Control Handbook in 1951 attracted the attention of the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE), which invited him to Japan in 1952. When he finally arrived in Japan in 1954, Juran met with ten manufacturing companies, notably Showa Denko, Nippon Kōgaku, Noritake, and Takeda Pharmaceutical Company. He also lectured at Hakone, Waseda University, Ōsaka, and Kōyasan. During his life, he made ten visits to Japan, the last in 1990.

Working independently of W. Edwards Deming (who focused on the use of statistical process control), Juran—who focused on managing for quality—went to Japan and started courses (1954) in quality management. The training started with top and middle management. The idea that top and middle management needed training had found resistance in the United States. For Japan, it would take some 20 years for the training to pay off. In the 1970s, Japanese products began to be seen as the leaders in quality. This sparked a crisis in the United States due to quality issues in the 1980s.

Contributions

Pareto principle

Management theory

The key issues facing managers in sales are no different than those faced by managers in other disciplines. Sales managers say they face problems such as “It takes us too long…we need to reduce the error rate.” They want to know, “How do customers perceive us?” These issues are no different than those facing managers trying to improve in other fields. The systematic approaches to improvement are identical. … There should be no reason our familiar principles of quality and process engineering would not work in the sales process.

The Juran trilogy

Transferring quality knowledge between East and West

During his 1966 visit to Japan, Juran learned about the Japanese concept of quality circles, which he enthusiastically evangelized in the West.Juran also acted as a matchmaker between U.S. and Japanese companies looking for introductions to each other.

Juran Institute

Juran founded the Juran Institute in 1979. The Institute is an international training, certification, and consulting company which provides training and consulting services in quality management, Lean manufacturing management and business process management, as well as Six Sigma certification. The institute is based in Southbury, Connecticut.

Retirement

Juran was active well into his 90s, and only gave up international travel at age 86. He retired at the age of 90 but still gave interviews. His accomplishments during the second half of his life include:

Consulting for U.S. companies such as Armour and Company, Dennison Manufacturing Company, Merck, Sharp & Dohme, Otis Elevator Company, Xerox, and the United States Navy Fleet Ballistic Missile System.

Consulting for Western European and Japanese companies, such as Rolls-Royce Motors, Philips, Volkswagen, Royal Dutch Shell and Toyota Motor Company.

Pro bono consulting for Soviet-bloc countries (Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Russia, Poland, and Yugoslavia)

Founding the Juran Institute and the Juran Foundation.

Later life and death

He started to write his memoirs at 92, which were published two months before he celebrated his 99th birthday. He gave two interviews at 94 and 97.

In 2004, he turned 100 years old and was awarded an honorary doctor from Luleå University of Technology in Sweden. A special event was held in May to mark his 100th birthday.

He and Sadie celebrated their 81st wedding anniversary in June 2007. They were both at the age of 102 at the time of the event. Juran died of a stroke on 28 February 2008, at the age of 103 in Rye, New York. He was active on his 103rd birthday and was caring for himself and Sadie who was in poor health when he died. Sadie died on 2 December 2008, at the age of 103 years. They were survived by their four children, nine grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren. Juran left a book that was 37% complete, which he began at age 98.

Share Your Stories

Joseph Juran was a key contributor to my development way back in the early 1980s. I simply wish to acknowledge his contribution.

If the work of Joseph Juran was a valuable influence and/or resource for you – please share your stories about that in the comments section below.

Or simply share a URL there that is relevant.

And – thank you – for sharing!

The My First Friday Favorite Guru Series

We each have many influencers, mentors, both active and passive, knowingly and unknowingly in their respective roles in our development.

This series is my attempt to acknowledge all of them… one by one… in no particular order… as I attempt to consciously reflect on what I have have learned and whom I have learned it from, regarding all things “Performance Improvement” – my first focus.

I have a long list.

Lucky me.

Next month – Donald Dewar.