Juran: The Quality Guru

Joseph Moses Juran was born on 24 December 2004 in Braila, Romania. On 24 December 2004, Dr Juran completed 100 healthy years. His life can be equated to a century of quality.

At the start of the twentieth century, quality implied an essential goodness of nature (an object of great quality), or a high grade of manufacture (high–quality goods).  In both interpretations, higher quality cost more.

Fifty years later, quality escaped its burden of luxury and was liberated from its association with high cost.  It emerged as a classless idea that emphasized precision and accuracy, reliability, usefulness, and a positive response from those who experienced the goods and services.

Hundred years later, the idea of quality has taken on a more substantial global meaning.  It is no longer restricted in its interpretation to be a structured methodology for improvement and cost reduction primarily of industrial products and business services.  We now aim to apply quality to improve entire systems: organizations, educational systems, healthcare systems, the environment, governments, and national cultures.

This powerful idea has been shaped and refined over the past hundred years, through the efforts of a small number of quality practitioners and evangelists.  Their ideas catalyzed into dramatic action our natural desire to improve.  The methods and tools enunciated by these quality experts have enabled us to improve more rapidly than we would have otherwise. If there were a quality pantheon Dr Juran would be a charter member.  Professor William Edwards Deming and Dr Walter A Shewhart would stand beside him.

Dr Juran provided the most precise and applicable definition of the elusive phenomenon we call quality: fitness for use.  He defined three universal sequences of action steps: one for achieving breakthrough, one for achieving control, and one for quality by design.  We call these sequences, collectively, The Juran Triology. 

He also articulated the Pareto Principle, which suggests that a small percentage of factors in any situation will yield a large percentage of the effect.  And for over sixty years, Dr Juran has tirelessly argued that a supportive organizational structure and management commitment are essential to the achievement of a habit of quality improvement.

In August 1912, the Jurans boarded the ship Mount Temple to America, with some trepidation: the Titanic had sunk in April of that year.  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.

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: textiles, ships, steel, locomotives, agricultural machinery, electric engines and automobiles.  As the sole supplier of telephone equipment to the burgeoning Bell System, the problem of ensuring quality fell squarely on the shoulders of Western Electric and its major plant, The Hawthorne Works.

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.  Armed with revolutionary ideas for improvement, he went up the corporate ladder at a rapid pace.

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 for many decades.

In 1952, Professor 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.

A quarter century later, 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. This was a first of its kind affiliation for India.  Qimpro patiently penetrated the Indian market with the Juran on Quality Improvement tapes and offered services to support implementation of the structured methodology.  The pioneering clients of Qimpro were Tata Steel, Punjab Tractors, Mahindra & Mahindra, Cummins, Larsen & Toubro, ITC, Crompton Greaves, Bajaj Electricals, Citibank, amongst others.  The business benefits for these clients were significant.

Punjab Tractors is a benchmark example in North India of the power of Juran on Quality Improvement delivering extraordinary results. Through the leadership of Chandra Mohan, Punjab Tractors adopted quality improvement as a business strategy in the 1980s. A substantial part of the financial success of this company was subsequently traceable to the quality initiative where Chandra Mohan “walked his talk”. He became a total believer in the Juran approach because it:

• involved no fancy investments
• offered a ten-fold return on investment
• exponentially multiplied returns
• involved no complex mathematics or statistics.

In 1999, the Indian Merchants’ Chamber honoured Chandra Mohan with the IMC Juran Medal. This is the first award, globally, where Dr Juran agreed to lend his name.

Soon thereafter, Chandra Mohan (in retirement) made a mission of sharing his experience with Juran on Quality Improvement in North India. This evolved into an executive program offered by Punjab Technical University, through the Gian Jyoti School of TQM and Entrepreneurship. To date, four batches of teams from industry in Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, and Chandigarh have been educated on the Juran methodology resulting in a collective saving in excess of Rs 10 crores. The fifth batch is I progress and the sixth batch is already booked.

In July 2004, the Indian Merchants’ Chamber honoured Dr Juran. In his message to the delegates, Dr Juran stated, “ India can be justly proud of its progress in the economic field. At the same time, it is well to learn from the Japanese experience: poor quality can be a serious national detriment; high quality can be of enormous benefit to the national economy.”

I believe The Juran Trilogy is the physics of quality management and engineering.  It enables me to understand and solve complex quality problems.

A Century of Quality

1904

• December 24, Joseph Juran born in Braila, Romania to Jakob and Gitel Juran.

1905

• March, Sadie Shapiro (wife) born.

1909

• Jakob Juran arrives in Minneapolis

1912

• August, the rest of the Juran family leaves Europe through the port of Antwerp, Belgium to Quebec.
• August 22, the Juran family enters the United States. Take up residence in Minneapolis.
• Joseph Juran (henceforth referred to as Juran) begins schooling at the Prescott School.

1913

• Juran works as a newsboy, selling the ‘Tribune’ in the morning and the ‘Journal’ in the afternoon; as a shoeshine boy roving the streets; as a grocery clerk.

1914

• World War I begins in Europe.

1915

• Juran works at an ice-house as bookkeeper.

1916

• Juran works as a packer at Boutelle Brothers.

1917

• Family moves to 2916 East 25th Street, Minneapolis, replete with indoor plumbing and toilets.
• Juran becomes a US citizen.
• Works as an errand boy for State Prohibition Commission.
• United States enter World War I.

1918

• World War I ends.

1920

• Juran graduates from high school in the June Division, as one of 20 honour students from a class of 226.
• September 4, mother dies at age 40.
• Two younger sisters are placed in orphanage.
• Jakob Juran operates a shoe repair shop.
• Juran enters University of Minnesota as electrical engineering student.

1921

• Takes chess championship at University of Minnesota.

1922

• Juran works as an electrician’s helper at CB&O Railroad.
• Vilfredo Pareto dies.

1924

• June, Juran graduates from University of Minnesota with BS in Electrical Engineering.
• Starts at Hawthorne Works.
• Assigned to Inspection.
• Meets Sadie Shapiro at train station.

1925

• June 26, marries Sadie Shapiro.
• Juran is commissioned into Signal Reserve.

1926

• Begins to apply SQC to manufacturing.

1928

• Juran writes pamphlet, ‘Statistical Methods Applied to Manufacturing Problems’.
• Designs training course at Hawthorne.

1929

• Promoted to ‘Supervisor of engineers doing inspection staff work involving time study, job evaluation, wage determination, budgeting, application of theory of probabilities to inspection practices, quality audits’.

1931

• January 2, father dies of a heart attack.
• Promotion. Supervises ‘engineers engaged in investigation of shop difficulties, customers’ quality complaints and disposition of defective products. Also supervision of time study, job evaluation, and wage determination work.’
• Begins attending Loyola University to study law.

1932

• Worst year of Depression. Layoffs at Hawthorne Works.

1934

• Promotion. Supervises ‘inspection of purchased materials and of electrical laboratory.’

1935

• Juran receives a JD degree from Loyola University.

1937

• Promoted to head of Industrial Engineering Department. Responsible for all factories of the Western Electric Co.
• Moves to corporate headquarters in New York.
• Articulates Pareto Principle.

1941

• March 11, Office of Lend-Lease Administration (OLLA) established.
• December 7, Pearl Harbour attacked.
• December 25, Juran asked to serve temporarily as Assistant Administrator for the Lend-Lease Program in the Foreign Economic Administration.
• US enters World War II.

1942

• May, cross-functional team at OLLA begins to meet.
• October, the committee makes its report.

1943

• Juran helps prepare report on OLLA activities to Congress.
• Begins to plan his new career.

1945

• July 3, Juran resigns from Western Electric.
• September 1, leaves OLLA. Serves as professor and chairman of Department of Industrial Engineering at NYU.
• World War II ends.
• Occupation of Japan begins.

1946

• Consults with Gillette.
• Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) forms Quality Control Research Group.
• American Society for Quality Control is founded.

1947

• W Edwards Deming invited to Japan by Supreme Command for the Allied Powers (SCAP) to help n the 1950 consensus.

1948

• Juran lectures at Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology.
• Peter Drucker advises GM to get into quality.

1949

• Teaches course at NYU: ‘Management of Inspection and Quality Control’.
• Creates course on ‘Managing for Quality’ through AMA.

1950

• Quits NYU.

1951

• ‘Quality Control Handbook’ published by Mc Graw-Hill.
• First Deming Prize awarded in Japan.

1952

• Juran is invited to visit Japan by Kobayashi, at ASQC meeting in New York.
• American occupation of Japan.

1953

• Juran visits Australia and conducts a series of lectures.

1954

• July-August, Juran delivers lectures in Japan.
• Receives Alumni Medal, University of Minnesota.

1956

• Publishes ‘Lectures in Quality Control’ (in Japanese).

1960

• Publishes ‘Lectures in General Management’ (in Japanese).

1961

• Recieves Edwards Medal from ASQC.
• Receives Scroll of Appreciation from JUSE.

1962

• Second edition, ‘Quality Control Handbook’ published.

1964

• Publishes ‘Managerial Breakthrough’, McGraw Hill.

1965

• Tells an audience in Stockholm that Japanese will achieve world leadership in quality within two decades.

1968

• Receives Medal of Technikhaza, Esztergom, Hungary.
• Named Honorary Member of ASQC.

1970

• Publishes ‘ Quality Planning and Analysis’ (with Frank M Gryna), McGraw Hill.

1974

• Third edition of ‘Quality Control Handbook’ published.
• End of CCS seminars in Japan.

1975

• Juran estimates that Japan draws even with US on quality.

1976

• Addresses Institute of Quality Assurance at Imperial College, London University.

1979

• Founds the Juran Institute. Serves as chairman. Creates and markets ‘ Juran on Quality Improvement’ videos.

1980

• Estimates that Japan is ahead of the US on quality.
• June 24, 9:30 pm “If Japan Can.. Why Can’t We?” broadcast on NBC.

1981

• Receives the Second Class order of the Sacred Treasure from Emperor Hirohito.

1983

• Inducted to AMA Wall of Fame.

1986

• Founds the Juran Foundation and serves as chairman.
• Testifies before Congress in regard to establishment of Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.
• Begins four-year service on the Baldrige Board of Overseers.
• Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award established.

1987

• Becomes chairman emeritus of the Juran Institute. A. Blanton Godfrey named chairman.

1988

• Fourth edition of ‘Quality Control Handbook’ is published.

1989

• Publishes ‘Juran on Leadership for Quality: An Executive Handbook’, Free Press.

1992

• Receives National Medal of Technology for Technology Management in ceremony with President George Bush. Cited for ‘development of key principles and methods by which enterprises manage the quality of their products and processes’.
• Publishes ‘ Juran on Quality by Design’, Free Press

1993

• Third edition of ‘Quality Planning and Analysis’ published.

1995

• Publishes ‘A History of Managing for Quality’, ASQC Quality Press.

2004

• Publishes ‘Architect of Quality’, McGraw Hill.
• July, Indian Merchants’ Chamber honours Juran.
• December 24. Dr Joseph Juran is 100.

2005

• March, Sadie Juran is 100.