Joseph M. Juran -- a man that dedicated his life to improving the quality of products and services to the world. Juran contributed to the Japanese Quality Revolution with Dr. Deming. Juran gave us Juran's Quality Handbook, now in its 5th Edition. This book is the ultimate guide to quality tools and their use...it is huge! But, it does not give us a good feel for Dr. Juran's philosophies. His "trilogy" (Juran on Leadership for Quality, Juran on Planning for Quality and Juran on Quality by Design) establishes his personal views.
Juran's Trilogy teaches us of four elements of Assuring Quality: Total Quality Management, Quality Planning, Quality Control and Quality Improvement. It all starts with Quality Management...and there are three levels of quality management.
Quality Management
Strategic -- upper management...responsible for establishing and carrying out policy decisions.
Operational -- middle management...responsible for managing the processes of the company.
Workforce -- assuring that specifications are met and work gets done.
Together, these three levels of a company have the opportunity to assure that quality occurs. But to assure quality, these "levels" must have tools at their disposal. The best set of tools available are those that belong in Total Qualty Management. Juran lists several tools that are very important:
Quality must be a part of every agenda in the company.
The business plan should contain quality goals.
Each level must establish goals.
Everyone must be trained.
To establish and meet a goal, it must be measured...measure everything possible.
Review progress.
Give recognition for excellent achievements.
Quality Planning
According to Juran, quality planning must accomplish:
meeting customers's needs,
minimizing product dissatisfaction,
avoiding rework,
optimizing company performance,
allowing participation by everyone in the company.
Juran even went so far as to provide us with a roadmap (in Juran's Quality Control Handbook, 4th edition (1998), McGraw-Hill) for quality planning. This roadmap consisted of 10 steps, with one overriding principle. The overall principle requires us to apply measurements to each step. The steps are:
Identify Customers
Discover Customers' Needs
Translate the Customers' Needs into our Language
Establish Units of Measure
Establish Measurement
Develop Product
Optimize Product Design
Develop the Process
Optimize: Prove the Process Capability
Transfer to Operations
These 10 steps lead us to a process that is ready to produce acceptable product at a very high capability ratio.
Quality Control
Juran instructs us that control is an important aspect of quality...we must maintain control, even for processes that prove to be very capable. To establish control, a feedback loop takes place. The loop consists of:
Sensor
...evaluates the performance of the system and reports this performance to the Umpire.
Umpire
...understands the specification, goal or standard and compares the actual performance to the spec, goal or standard. If there significant discrepancies exist, the Umpire reports to the Actuator.
Actuator
...Makes changes to the system to assure agreement with the spec, goal or standard.
Quality Improvement
Finally, Dr. Juran told us that Upper Management (and no one else) is truly responsible for improving the quality of our products, processes and lives! To do this, they must:
create awareness of the need for quality improvement,
mandate quality improvement,
create the infrastructure,
train everyone,
review progress,
recognize successes,
expound the results
Dr. Joe Juran provides us with some of our most common sensical quality advice. He also can provide a wealth of information in his many books (the trilogy, the handbook and his new book on the history of quality) and in his self. I had the fortune to discuss quality with this great man, one-on-one, for a very short period of time once. His best advice to me?
Simple..."do unto others...."
You know the rest. As I thought about that simple statement, it began to make a lot of sense. If every product I help make, or every service I help give, would satisfy me...then, it probably will satisfy my customers. Too often, we forget that our customers are simply other people, trying to make it through life just as we are. Dr. Juran's simple words to me really makes that stand out.
