Joseph Moses Juran (1904-2008) - Quality Management

"In the language of the industrial leader, quality is primarily a business problem, not a technical problem." (Joseph M. Juran)

Joseph Moses Juran 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. Juran is widely credited for his first work on quality - the training pamphlet - Statistical Methods Applied to Manufacturing Problems, and publication of Quality Control Handbook and Managerial Breakthrough. He graduated from University of Minnesota and Joined Western Electric in Chicago.

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.

    As an engineer Juran noted that defects frequency followed a pattern the confirms to the mathematical model provided by Vilfredo Pareto an Italian economist   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. 

According to Juran quality is based on:

    Quality Planning : Identify the customers & their needs

    Quality Control : Develop process and Optimize the product features to meet customer needs

    Quality Improvement: Optimize the process

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 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.