Joseph M. Juran?
Joseph M. Juran (1904-2008)
Juran was born to a Jewish family in 1904 in Romania. In 1912, he immigrated to America with his family, settling in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In school, his level of mathematical and scientific proficiency so exceeds the average that he eventually skips the equivalent of four grade levels. Juran was a chess champion at an early age. He graduated from Minneapolis South High School in 1920.
In 1924, with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Minnesota, Juran joined Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works. His first job was troubleshooting in the Complaint Department.
In 1926, a team from Bell Laboratories made a visit to the Hawthorne factory. The team was made up of some of the pioneers of statistical quality control-including Donald Quarles, Walter Shewhart and Harold Dodge. Their intention was to apply some of the tools and methods they had been developing in the laboratory to operations in the factory environment. The team established a training program and Juran was selected as one of the twenty trainees, and then as one of two engineers for the Inspection Statistical Department. It was one of the first such departments established in industry in the U.S.
Juran was promoted to department chief in 1928, and the following year became a division chief. He published his first quality related article in Mechanical Engineering in 1935.
In 1937, he moved to Western Electric/AT&T’s headquarters in New York City.
During the Second World War, Juran served in the Lend-Lease Administration and Foreign Economic Administration. Just before war’s end, he resigned from Western Electric, and his government post, intending to become a freelance consultant. He joined the faculty of New York University as an adjunct Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering, where he taught courses in quality control and ran round table seminars for executives.
Juran in Japan
The end of World War II compelled Japan to change its focus from becoming a military power to becoming an economic one. Despite Japan’s ability to compete on price, its consumer goods manufacturers suffered from a long-established reputation of poor quality. The first edition of Juran’s Quality Control Handbook in 1951 attracted the attention of the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE), which invited him to Japan. During his life Juran made ten visits to Japan to teach the principles of quality management.
Nearly thirty years after his first visit, along with W. Edwards Deming, Juran received Second Order of the Sacred Treasure award from Emperor Hirohito of Japan. It was bestowed in recognition of his contribution to “the development of quality control in Japan and the facilitation of U.S. and Japanese friendship.”
Dr. Juran published his lectures from Japan in his book Managerial Breakthrough in 1964. In 1979, Juran founded The Juran Institute to better facilitate broader exposure of his ideas. The Juran Institute is today one of the leading quality management consultancies in the world, and it produces books, workbooks, videos and other materials to support the wide use of Dr. Juran’s methods. The institute and the consulting practice continue to thrive today. Dr. Juran worked to promote quality management into his 90’s, and only recently retired from his semi-public life. One can obtain the papers, lectures, and tapes of Dr. Juran from The Juran Institute or other quality management educational providers. The Juran Foundation, which he founded, continues his work, exploring the social and industrial implications of quality improvement while making his and others’ valuable contributions more accessible.
External Links
- http://www.skymark.com/resources/leaders/juran.asp
- http://www.csom.umn.edu/Page5340.aspx
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_M._Juran
