Juran Trilogy Contributions to Quality Improvements

Table of Contents:-

• Juran Trilogy
• Juran’s Contributions to Quality
• Pareto Principle
• Juran’s 10 Steps for Quality Improvements
• Evaluation of Juran’s Approach

Juran Trilogy

Juran developed a quality trilogy (quality planning, quality control, and quality improvement) to assist management in the implementation of strategic quality planning. The Juran trilogy explains the below process and expands on other key Juran philosophies.

1) Quality Improvement

“The organised creation of beneficial change, the attainment of unprecedented levels of performance.” Juran believes the improvement process starts here, rather than with quality planning, because it provides a measurable and early return on investment.

It also creates greater teamwork and enthusiasm and provides important lessons for quality planning, Juran believes that true quality leadership requires a revolutionary rate of improvement, which requires an organisational structure lacking in many US companies. Juran also believes that improvement takes place project by project and quality improvement does not come free.

2) Quality Planning

This planning activity includes discovering customer needs and developing products and processes to meet those needs.

Juran’s input-output chain links the steps in this process which are linked (one step becomes the input for the next step). Juran also identifies a triple role concept which directs people to play the role of customer, processor and supplier as planned. To succeed, there must also be common units of measure and ways of evaluating quality.

3) Quality Control

The managerial processes used to, “Evaluate actual performance, compare actual performance to goals, and take action on the differences.” Juran notes that the process of control is one of holding the status quo. More precisely, control consists of measuring actual performance, comparing it to the target or standard, and taking necessary action to correct the (bad) difference. Control maintains the standards/requirements defined during the planning stage. Its goal is stability and consistency.

Juran Trilogy drives control of processes, reduced operating costs, Quality Control costs, and the cyclical nature of the approach.

Table: Universal Processes for Managing Quality

Quality Planning	Quality Control	Quality Improvement
1) Establish quality goals.	Choose control subjects.	Prove the need.
2) Identify customers.	Choose units of measure.	Identify projects
3) Discover customer needs.	Set goals	Organise project teams,
4) Develop product features.	Create a sensor.	Diagnose the causes.
5) Develop process features.	Measure actual performance.	Provide remedies and prove remedies are effective
6) Establish process controls, transfer to operations	Interpret the difference.	Deal with resistance to change.
	Take action on the difference	Control to hold the gains

Juran’s Contributions to Quality

Juran found that most companies pay too much importance to quality control and are weaker in quality planning and quality improvement. He felt that quality planning and quality improvement should be considered important. The major contributions of Juran to quality are as follows:

Juran’s Contributions to Quality

1. Juran’s Quality Trilogy
2. Pareto Principle
3. Juran’s Breakthrough Sequence
4. Juran 10 Steps for Quality Improvements

Juran’s Breakthrough Sequence

Juran believes that in this new economic age, it is imperative to develop the habit of making annual improvements in quality and annual reductions in quality costs. If this habit is not developed, the ground will be lost to those competitors who already have it.

Continuous efforts are required to achieve a breakthrough. This, in turn, requires an organised sequence of activities, because, as has already been stated, the breakthrough is the organised creation of beneficial change Juran suggests an organised action and education programme which can assist the management in acquiring this habit. The main ingredients of this programme are as follows:

1) Accept the responsibility for making improvements.

2) Understanding the universal sequence of events for making the improvements – juran calls this ‘the universal breakthrough sequence’, to be outlined below.

3) Become familiar with the key concepts and techniques by which this universal sequence is carried out.

4) Apply the universal sequence to actual company problems.

The first of the above ingredients is crucial because one usually finds that most managers do not regard themselves as responsible for making improvements. The approach usually followed is the exhortation cascade, making sure that everyone gets the message. This is the wrong approach; nothing happens after an exhortation campaign, even though no one is against quality. What is needed is actual involvement in specific projects, with emphasis on the assignment of clear responsibilities. If there are no specific programmes for quality improvement on a project-by-project basis, there is no hope for any (specific) breakthroughs.

But, as all breakthroughs follow the same sequence, the breakthrough sequence is universal. All breakthroughs follow a common sequence of discovery, diagnosis, organisation, corrective action and control.

This breakthrough sequence is represented as follows:

1) Proof of the Need

Managers must first prove that a breakthrough is needed and then create a climate conducive to change. To demonstrate the need, data must be collected to show the extent of the problem, the data most convincing to top management are usually cost-of-quality figures.

2) Project Identification

The Pareto analysis distinguishes the vital few projects from the trivial many and sets priorities based on problem frequency.

3) Organisation for Improvement

Two organisational entities should be established a steering group and a diagnostic group. The steering group, composed of people from several departments, suggests possible problem causes, defines the programme, gives the authority to experiment, helps overcome resistance to change and implements the solution.

4) Diagnostic Journey

The diagnostic group studies symptoms, and develops hypotheses and experiments to find the problem’s true causes. It also seeks to determine whether defects are primarily operator-controllable or management-controllable. Theories can be tested by using past and current production data and conducting experiments. With this information, the diagnostic group then suggests answers to the problem.

5) Remedial Action

The need for change must be established in terms that are important to the key people involved. Logical arguments alone are insufficient. Participation is, therefore, required in both social aspects and the technical aspects of change.

6) Breakthrough in Cultural Resistance to Change

Departments that must take corrective action must be convinced to cooperate. Presentations to these departments should include the size of the problem, the cost of recommended changes, alternative solutions, expected benefits and efforts taken to anticipate the change’s impact on employees. Time for reflection may be required, and adequate training is necessary.

7) Holding the Gains

Control at the New Level: Controls must be set up to monitor the solution and see that it works and to keep abreast of unforeseen developments. Formal follow-up is provided by the control sequence used to monitor and correct sporadic problems.

Pareto Principle

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule, the principle of factor sparsity and the law of the vital few) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Business management consultant Joseph M. Juran suggested the principle and named it after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who observed in 1906 that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population, Pareto developed the principle by observing that 20% of the pen pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas.

The Pareto chart gets its name from Vilfreda Pareto, an Italian Economist. In 1906, Pareto noted that 20% of the population in Italy owned 80% of the property, He proposed that this ratio could be found in many places in the physical world and theorised it might be a natural law, where 80% of the outcomes are determined by 20% of the inputs.

Pareto Analysis is a statistical technique in decision making used to select a limited number of tasks that produce significant overall effects. It uses the Pareto Principle (also known as the 80/20 rule); the idea that by doing 20% of Lie work one can generate 80% of the benefit of doing the whole job. Or, in terms of quality improvement, a large majority of problems (80%) are produced by a few key reasons (20%). This is also referred to as the trivial many and the vital few.

In the late 1940s, the quality management guru Joseph M. Juran proposed a principle named after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. Pareto had observed that 80% of income in Italy was received by only 20% of the population. Pareto later carried out surveys on several other countries and found to his surprise that a similar distribution applied.

The 80/20 rule can be applied to almost  any aspect:

1) 80% of customer complaints arise from 20% of your services or products.

2) 80% of schedule delays arise from 20% of the possible causes.

3) 20% of your services or products account for 80% of your profit.

4) 20% of your salesforce produces 80% of your company revenues.

5) 20% of a system’s defects cause 80% of its problems.

Use of Pareto Chart Pareto Analysis is a statistical technique in decision-making used to select a limited number of tasks that produce significant overall effects. It uses the Pareto Principle (also known as the 80/20 rule); the idea that by doing 20% of the work one can generate 80% of the benefit of doing the whole job. The uses of the Pareto chart are as follows:

1) A Pareto chart breaks a big problem into smaller pieces, identifies the most significant factors, shows where to focus efforts, and allows better use of limited resources.

2) It allows the user to separate the few significant problems from the many possible issues to focus on improving efforts, arrange data according to priority or importance, and determine which issues are most important using data, not perception.

3) A Pareto chart is a good tool to use when the process, the user is investigating produces data that are broken down into categories and the user can count the number of times each category occurs. A Pareto diagram puts data in a hierarchical order which allows the most significant problems to be corrected first.

4) The Pareto analysis technique primarily identifies and evaluates non-conformities, although it can summarise all data types. It is the diagram most often used in management presentations.

5) Making problem-solving decisions is not the only use of the Pareto Principle. Since Pareto charts convey information in a way that enables the user to see the choices that should be made, they can be used to set priorities for many practical applications.

Juran’s 10 Steps for Quality Improvements

Juran’s 10 Steps for Quality Improvement are as follows:

Step 1: Create awareness of the need and opportunity for quality improvement.

Step 2: Set goals for continuous improvement.

Step 3: Build an organization to achieve goals by establishing a quality council, selecting a project, identifying problems, appointing teams, and choosing facilitators.

Step 4: Provide training for everyone.

Step 5: Execute projects to solve problems.

Step 6: Report progress.

Step 7: Recognize achievements.

Step 8: Communicate results.

Step 9: Maintain a record of successes.

Step 10: Integrate annual improvements into the company’s regular systems and processes to maintain momentum.

Evaluation of Juran’s Approach

Joseph M. Juran made many contributions to the field of quality management in his 70 and more active working years. His book, the Quality Control Handbook, is a classic concern for quality engineers. He revolutionised the Japanese philosophy of quality management and, in no small way, worked to help shape its economy into the industrial leader it is today. Dr. Juran was the first to incorporate the human aspect of quality management, called Total Quality Management. With this, Juran’s approach can be evaluated based on its strengths and weaknesses, as given in the Table below:

Table: Relative Strengths and Weaknesses of Juran

Strengths of Approach	Weaknesses Approach
1) Emphasises the need to move away from quality hype and slogans.	1) Does not relate to other work on leadership and motivation.
2) Stresses the role of the customer, both internal and external.	2) Seen by some as undervaluing the worker’s contribution by rejecting bottom-up initiatives.
3) Management involvement and commitment are stressed.	3) Seen as being stronger on control systems than the human dimension in the organisation.
4) Concentration on genuine issues of management practice.	4) Most suitable for industrial and manufacturing sectors, limited application in service organisations.
5) Emphasis on interaction and communication between companies and their current and potential customers.
6) Emphasise the strategically planned, step-by-step process of quality improvement rather than a shortcut to quality
7) Rewards based on results