Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Juran’s Quality Philosophy

Introduction:-
Joseph M.Juran is considered to be one of the earliest American Quality Gurus and has visited Japan in the early 1950’s shortly after Deming on the invitation from JUSE (Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers). He contributed to the development of Quality Control in Japan and was recipient of the highest decoration presented to a non-Japanese citizen, Second Order of the Sacred Treasure awarded by the Emperor of Japan.
Juran interest has been wider than just quality, having been concerned with the underlying principles common to all managerial activity. He started professionally as an engineer and has had a varied career in management as industrial executive, government administrator, university professor, labor arbitrator, corporate director and management consultant.
Juran’s message ( Juran’s Triology)
Quality does not happen by accident, it must be planned and it should be a structured approach for Company- Wide Quality Management
Juran sees quality planning as part of the Quality Trilogy of
  • Quality planning,
  • Quality control and
  • Quality improvement.
The key elements in implementing company-wide strategic quality planning are in turn seen as
  • Identifying customers and their needs
  • Establishing optimal quality goals
  • Creating measurements of quality
  • Planning processes capable of meeting quality goals under operating conditions and
  • Producing continuing results in improved market share, premium prices and a reduction in error rates in the office.
Quality planning comprises the following basic activities:
  1. Identify the customers and their needs.
  2. Develop a product that responds to those needs.
  3. Develop a process able to produce that product.


On a closure look, we can generalize a Road Map for Quality planning- an invariable sequence of steps as follows:


  1. Identify who are the customers.
  2. Determine the needs of those customers.
  3. Translate those needs in to our language.
  4. Develop a product that can respond to those needs.
  5. Optimize the process
  6. Prove that the process can produce the product under operating conditions.
  7. Transfer the process to operations.
Juran mission according to him includes the following:
  • Creating an awareness of the role of quality planning due to the quality crisis in the 1980’s and the need to revise the approach to quality planning.
  • Establishing a new approach to quality planning and providing training in how to plan for quality using this new approach.
  • Assisting companies to replan existing processes throughout the company, which contain unacceptable quality deficiencies.
  • Establishing mastery within companies over the quality planning process and utilizing this to plan for quality in ways that avoid the creation of chronic problems.
Juran identifies the lesson as putting the emphasis on the results to be achieved, not on the campaign:
"The recipe for action should consist of 90% substance and 10% exhortation, not the reverse.
His formula for results is:
  • Establish specific goals to be reached.
  • Establish plan for reaching the goals.
  • Assign clear responsibility for meeting the goals.
  • Base the rewards on results achieved.
Dr.Juran warns that there are no shortcuts to quality. He is skeptical of companies that rush into applying Quality Circles and believes that majority of the quality problems are the fault of poor management, rather than poor workmanship.
In general, he believes that the management controllable defects account for over 80% of the quality problems. Further he emphasis that the long-term training to improve quality should start at the top.