Joseph M. Juran

Joseph Moses Juran (December 24, 1904 – February 28, 2008) was an American industrial engineer and philanthropist.

Juran (pronounced juh-RAN; rhymes with "man") is known as a business and industrial quality "guru," while making significant contributions to management theory, human resource management and consulting as well. He wrote several books, and is known worldwide as one of the most important 20th century thinkers in quality management.

Early life

Juran was born to a Jewish family in 1904 in Brăila, Romania, and later lived in Gura Humorului; (op. cit.). In 1912, he immigrated to America with his family (including his brother Nathan Juran, a future film director). He excelled in school, especially in mathematics. He was a chess champion at an early age, and dominated chess at AT&T, see below.

In 1924, with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Minnesota (he would later earn a law degree), Juran joined Western Electric at the Hawthorne Works. His first job was in the inspection branch.

In 1926, he married Sadie Shapiro, and they subsequently had four children: Robert, Sylvia, Charles and Donald. (They had been married for over 81 years when he passed away in 2008.)

Juran was promoted to a managerial position in 1928, and the following year became a division chief. He would publish 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.

Japan

After World War II, Japan was experiencing a crisis in mass manufactured product quality. Japanese goods were thought to be inexpensive, however, easily broken and in general poor quality. The Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) recognized these issues and invited Juran to Japan in 1954.

Working independently of W. Edwards Deming (who focused on the use of statistical quality 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 need 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.

Pareto principle

It was in 1941 that Juran discovered the work of Vilfredo Pareto. Juran expanded the Pareto principle applying it to quality issues (e.g. 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 has preferred "the vital few and the useful many" to signal that the remaining 80% of the causes should not be totally ignored.

Contribution to management

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 sampling, inspection plans, (tables), and the Shewhart 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. Resistance to change—or, in his terms, cultural resistance—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. Juran wrote (published 1964) Managerial Breakthrough outlining the issue.

In 1966 Juran promoted the Japanese idea of quality circles.

He also developed the "Juran's trilogy," an approach to cross-functional management that is composed of three managerial processes: planning, control, and improvement.

In 1979 he founded Juran Institute. In 2004, Juran became honorary doctor at Luleå University of Technology in Sweden.

Death

Juran died of a stroke on February 28, 2008 at 103 in Rye, New York.^[1]

Bibliography

• Juran, Joseph M. (1944). Bureaucracy, a challenge to better management. New York, London, Harper & Bros. OCLC 986504. 
• Juran, Joseph M. (1945). Management of inspection and quality control. New York, London, Harper & Bros. OCLC 1744335. 
• Juran, Joseph M.; Frank M. Gryna (1951). Juran's Quality Control Handbook. Mcgraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-033176-6. 
• Quality Control Handbook (1951) a landmark guide to quality tools and ideas. (fifth edition, 1999)
• Case Studies in Industrial Management, 1955 (fourth edition, 1988)
• The Corporate Director, 1966
• Managerial Breakthrough, McGraw-Hill, 1964 . ISBN 0-07-034037-4
• Planning for Quality, 1988
• Leadership for Quality, An Executive Handook, N.Y Freepress, 1989
• Quality By Design, The Free Press , 1992
• A History of Managing for Quality,
• Architect of Quality, McGraw-Hill, 2003 , his autobiography.

In Japanese

• Planning and Practices in Quality Control published by Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers, a collection of Juran's 1954 lectures.
• Lectures in Quality Control, 1956
• Lectures in General Management, 1960

Notes and references

• The Juran Institute's official web site
• Quality Progress, Gurus of Quality: 100 years of Juran, (May) 37(5):25-39, Phillips-Donaldson, D. 2004
• Quality by Design, The Free Press, 1992

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