Juran - A Lifetime of Influence

September 2004 | Source: Business India
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On 24 December 2004, Dr Joseph M Juran will complete 100 years. This year, quality and management leaders across the world are celebrating this historic event. The list includes icons such as Peter Drucker, the management guru; Robert Galvin, Chairman Emeritus, Motorola; Curt Reimann, Retired Director, Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award; and Yoshio Kondo, Professor Emeritus, Kyoto University, Japan. Closer home, the IMC organized a ‘Juran Trilogy’ event in July to recognize the contribution of this living legend, with specific reference to India.

Remarkably, at the age of 99, Dr Juran is writing yet one more book in collaboration with one of his grandsons. It will address leadership aspects of managing for quality with what he considers a unique slant: a strong how-to section. In his view, Japan is the world quality leader (and is bringing along other Asian countries, such as South Korea and now China), while America is in the lead in only a few industries. Interestingly, he does not have much hope for Six Sigma as quality’s savior. Nor does he especially like it, particularly all the hype, which he blames somewhat on the media, and the colored belts, because usually they are not accompanied by any certification. According to Dr Juran, “Six Sigma is just a new name for old quality. It will quickly go the way of other fads, like reengineering”. 

According to me, the evolution of the quality movement in the twentieth century is closely intertwined with the life story of Dr Juran. His remarkable story began at the turn of the twentieth century in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania.  He was born on 24 December 1904 in Braila, and grew up in Gurahumora, a tiny village with mud streets and houses with dirt floors, a place that Dr Juran grimly jokes, “had no quality problems.”

In August 1912, the Jurans boarded the ship Mount Temple to America, with some trepidation: the Titanic had sunk in April of that year.  In his early years, from age 12 to age 16, Dr Juran held more jobs than most people hold in a lifetime.  He worked as a packer, an errand boy, an office boy, a shipping clerk, a bundle boy, a shoe salesman, a house wrecker, and a printer’s helper. Thereafter, at the University of Minnesota, Dr Juran proved to be an able student at the University of Minnesota, but not outstanding.  He might have achieved better grades, but two factors intervened.  One was work, which consumed most of his nonclass hours.  Tuitions, after all, stood at $25 per semester.  The other factor, which he had not anticipated, was chess.  Consumed by the game, he went on to win the university chess championship.

It was at Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works, one of the great factories of the age, that Dr Juran’s life-work began to crystallize.  “The Bell System was at that time facing some massive quality problems which its sister industries were not to face until decades later” he wrote, “…a bewilderingly complex system; unprecedented interchangeability of mechanical apparatus and electrical circuitry; extremely close tolerances of manufacture and measurement; severe requirements for reliability and maintainability.”  There was far more possibility of error and variation in the manufacture of telephone equipment than in the other major products of the day.

 Dr Juran’s knowledge of the Hawthorne operations, combined with his analytical skills, youthful energy, ferocious capacity for work, and tremendous drive to succeed, caused him to question the prevailing inspection method early in his career.  He realized that his activities provided only short-term fixes to short-term problems and had absolutely no effect on the system.  The innovative Dr Juran worked on remedying the root causes of problems with extraordinary success, resulting in his climbing the corporate ladder at a rapid pace.

Then in a dramatic turn of events, Dr Juran was given the chance to put his innovative skills and ideas to use in an integral part of the Lend-Lease Administration effort in World War II.  The immense and urgent undertaking allowed Dr Juran to throw himself into the fight against the Nazis.

The post-war period afforded Dr Juran the opportunity to reflect on his experiences, culminating in the publication of “Juran’s Quality Control Handbook”, world-renowned as a “sacred text” on the subject of quality.  During this time, he formulated the concepts that would establish his reputation: the definition of quality, the universal sequences for achieving breakthrough and control, continuous improvement, the Pareto Principle, and The Juran Trilogy, amongst others.

In 1952, Professor W Edwards Deming, a consultant to the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE), sent them a copy of Juran’s Quality Control Handbook.  Consequently, at the invitation of JUSE, Dr Juran arrived in Tokyo on 4 July 1954.  His lectures to the Japanese were well-organized and precise.  Much of the material was based on the Handbook; the ideas were well supported by case examples.  For several years thereafter, his ideas had an impact on his clients in industrial Japan.

The Juran Institute was established in 1979 in Connecticut.  The first offering from the Institute, Juran on Quality Improvement, a 16 tape video series was a major commercial success.  Qimpro Consultants was appointed as the Indian affiliate of the Juran Institute in 1987. The pioneering clients of Qimpro were Tata Steel, Punjab Tractors, Mahindra & Mahindra, Cummins, Larsen & Toubro, ITC, Citibank, amongst others. The business benefits for these clients were significant. Currently, the Juran Institute is headed by Joseph A DeFeo.

In semi-retirement, approaching 100, Dr Juran has been speculating on what will take place during the twenty-first century. Some of his major hopes are:

  • That the awareness of the importance of quality will spread to national policy makers
  • That correlations will be established between performance on quality versus financial results
  • That financial analysts will use achievements in quality as inputs for creditworthiness as well as judging the financial potential of companies
  • That national, industry, and other quality indexes will be evolved paralleling those already available on productivity, prices, and so on
  • That degree granting colleges oriented to quality will proliferate among universities, business schools, and engineering schools
  • That with the emergence of college faculties oriented to quality, research will intensify
  • That professionalism among quality specialists will grow. While this has already happened at the technical level (quality engineers, reliability engineers) it needs to happen at the business level
  • That future laws will extend the use of licensing in the quality field, on the ground of protecting the public interest.

In May 2004, at Dr Juran’s centennial celebration in the US, Robert Galvin, stated: “Dr Juran’s contribution to society equals the most valuable contribution by anyone in the recent century. His inspiration and instruction, which in a practical way have been applied by countless institutions, improved the quality and efficiency of all institutions that serve others, be they commercial or even in the public sector. He did this in a most appealing personal way….Joe has ably served more people in our society than any other man I have known.”

Finally, for anyone hoping to live as long and as productive a life as Dr Juran has, he offers three clues: “Luck, genes and habits - in that order”.

CREDITS: Suresh Lulla, Founder & Mentor, Qimpro Consultants Pvt. Ltd.
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