JOSEPH JURAN: BIOGRAPHY AND MAIN CONTRIBUTIONS - CULTURE VOCABULARY - 2025

Joseph Juran was an administrative and business engineer and consultant who revolutionized the concepts around business administration and quality management at different levels of production.

He was born in 1908 in Romania, in a place called Brali, and died in the United States in 2008, at the age of 103. It was in the North American nation where Juran developed most of his life and career.

Joseph Moses Juran is known in the business and production areas for having astutely approached the management and quality management in the different production processes, increasing the quality level of the final product and allowing the company a higher income.

Juran recognized that managing certain internal stages in production with greater care could entail a greater amount of expenses for the company, but the results in the medium and long term would be enough to recover the money invested. His concepts allowed him to work with major companies in the United States and Japan.

The Romanian-American has left a bibliographic legacy, whose contained philosophy has served as a starting point to continue the reflections on administrative and business management in the current productive dynamics of the world.

Biography

Juran was born in Romania in 1908. Four years later he emigrated to the United States with his family, settling in the state of Minnesota. It is in the United States where Joseph Juran begins his education, demonstrating a great ability for mathematics and chess.

He graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1924 and received a degree in electrical engineering. Joins the job market as staff in the problem-solving department of a Western Electric affiliate company.

Juran spent several years in that company, until an initiative willing to apply new methods of statistical personnel management led him to occupy one of the positions of the statistical supervision committee, formed to insert the training sessions.

This first look at the internal mechanisms of business management and administration was what started Juran's rise.

By the late 1920s, Juran had already achieved a position as department head and was later promoted to division head.

During the Great Depression years, Juran began law studies. He graduated in 1935, the year in which he publicly addressed the issue of quality management in an article published by Mechanical Engineering magazine.

He continued to work for Western Electric at its affiliate company AT&T. During World War II, Joseph Juran held a public position in the Administration of Foreign Economy, under the government of Franklin Roosevelt.

The end of World War II led Juran to resign from all positions, public and private, and start as an independent consultant. He worked for companies like Gillete and General Foods; He was also a professor and organized roundtables at New York University on quality control.

Juran continued to work independently and through medium-sized companies for the rest of his life. He retired permanently in the 90s.

He published several books, as well as a series of articles that allowed him to better present his ideas. It is considered one of the pillars participating in the Japanese quality revolution.

Main contributions

1- Pareto Principle

It is one of the best known concepts attributed to Joseph Juran, who channeled it into the area of ​​quality and productivity.

Juran states that in a production process and in the resulting quality level, a small percentage of factors (positive or negative) can give rise to a large percentage of the possible effects. Juran estimates that 80% of problems that arise are the result of 20% of possible causes.

With this principle, Juran promoted the observation and supervision of the different stages in which the product was formed, since carelessness along the way diminishes the quality of the product.

2- Quality management

Through his book Management Breakthrough, Juran was able to expose his vision about the possibilities of a quality management so effective that it was capable of having an impact on the income and productive levels of companies.

Juran recognized that a reorganization that led to higher standards would lead to a major internal reorganization.

Joseph Juran approached his theory of administration from the previous conceptions of quality, focused mainly on the finished product.

Juran then decided to delve into the previous stages of production, and add labor as an important and influential part in these processes.

Through his postulates, Juran advocated the formation and training of the main administrators and managers of certain productive areas, of medium and even high rank.

Juran did not conceive that training was only for low-level workers, but also their superiors had to be trained to better perform their functions.

Through observation, Joseph Juran was able to recognize the main quality failures of more traditional American companies: the main problems influencing business quality were resistance to change and poor human relationships.

3- The Juran trilogy

This is one of your most important disclosures that supplements everything covered in your quality management ideas. The dimensions of this trilogy allow a much more practical perception of Juran's thinking.

The divisions managed around quality are quality planning, quality control and quality improvement.

- Quality planning

Quality planning consists of achieving certain objectives that allow us to start towards a global project of eventual materialization.

These objectives are to identify consumers, determine their needs, add qualities to the products that can satisfy those needs, determine that the processes necessary for the creation of the product are within the scope of the company and, if not, create them; and finally, carry them out.

- QA

Quality control is perceived as a feedback process in which aspects already directly related to the finished product are observed.

The real performance level of the product is evaluated and compared with the goals and objectives set at the beginning, in order to follow up on the differences and solve them in the future.

- Quality improvement

Quality improvement ranks high in the Juran trilogy, consisting of a number of responsibilities; They are reflective situations that will allow an objective look at each new action plan.

It is about having an effective awareness for improvement. Quality improvement must be present at every stage and function of a process.

The infrastructure to sustain the ideals of quality must be created and implemented efficiently, and internal processes must be analyzed and collated regularly. In addition, the staff must be properly trained.

The contemplations in quality improvement also include the promotion of results and the recognition of greater efficiency, as well as a series of rewards arranged to increase work performance.

Quality revolution in Japan

Years after World War II, the quality level of Japanese products was among the lowest in the world.

When the first ideas on quality management promoted by Juran reached the eastern island, the main consortia and business and planning chambers turned to the engineer to put their ideas into practice.

Duran's actions in Japan demonstrated with their results that administration and quality management provide benefits, even if they are not immediate.

Approximately 20 years after its implementation in various industries, Japan had the highest level of quality in a wide range of products in the world.

Joseph Juran recognizes the success of Japan under certain conditions: a greater pace in terms of quality improvement, the training of all business hierarchical levels, the participation of the most elementary workforce, among others.

Quality and other concepts from Juran

Joseph Juran conceptualizes quality as an income-oriented way; those characteristics of a product that are able to satisfy consumer needs and increase business income. Hence their claim: better quality costs more money.

In the same way, another concept of quality attributed to its authorship is also handled, according to which it orients it towards production costs.

In this sense, failures and deficiencies are the most important aspects to observe in a product, the absence of which would result in a better quality product that does not necessarily have to be more expensive to produce.

Among other concepts addressed by Juran is the human dimension of the business productive apparatus.

The engineer was an advocate for the participation of the workforce in the most important internal processes to guarantee effective quality management and administration in all stages of production.

References

1. Donaldson, DP (2004). 100 Years of Juran. Quality Progress.
2. Juran, JM (1989). They swear on Leadership for Quality. New York: Free Press.
3. Juran, JM (1990). They swear and planning for quality. Madrid: Diaz de Santos.
4. Juran, JM (1993). Made in USA: A Renaissance in Quality. Harvard Business Review, 42-50.
5. Juran, JM (2014). The Quality Trilogy. A Universal Approach to Managing for Quality. Quality Assurance, 4-9.