Recognition
The Life and Contributions of Joseph M. Juran
Joseph M. Juran is characterized by a remarkable span and an extraordinary intensity. He has been called the "father" of quality, a quality "guru" and the man who "taught quality to the Japanese." He is recognized as the person who added the human dimension to quality, broadening it from its statistical origins to what we now call Total Quality Management.
Juran's early years were anything but free from trouble. Joseph Moses Juran was born December 24, 1904, in the city of Braila, part of Romania. His father, Jakob, was a village shoemaker. Sometime after 1904, the family moved to Gurahumora, a Carpathian mountain village, then a part of the Austria Hungarian Empire. In 1909, Jakob left Romania seeking a better life in America. The entire family joined Jakob in Minneapolis in 1912.
To make ends meet, the children went to work at whatever jobs they could find. Joe drove a team of horses; he also worked as a laborer, a shoe salesman, bootblack, grocery clerk and as a bookkeeper for the local icehouse. At age 16 he entered the University of Minnesota and graduated in 1920 with a degree in Electrical Engineering. His industrial career began at Western Electric where they placed him in the inspection department. By 1937 he was the head of the Industrial Engineering Department.
In December of 1941, Juran took a "temporary" leave of absence from Western Electric to serve in Washington as an assistant administrator with the Lend-Lease Administration, which managed the shipment of goods and material to friendly nations deemed crucial to the war effort. After the war, he went on his own.
He wrote the standard reference work on quality control, the Quality Control Handbook, first published in 1951 and now in its fourth edition. In 1954, he delivered a series of lectures to Japanese managers which helped set them on the path to quality. The classic book, Managerial Breakthrough, first published in 1964, presented a more general theory of quality management, comprising quality control and quality improvement. It was the first book to describe a step-by-step sequence for breakthrough improvement, a process that has become the basis for quality initiatives worldwide. In 1979, Juran founded the Juran Institute to create new tools and techniques for promulgating his ideas. The first new tool was Juran on Quality Improvement, a pioneering series of video training programs. Also in that year, he helped with the creation of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, testifying before Congress and serving on the Board of Overseers.
Nearly thirty years after his first visit to Japan, Emperor Hirohito awarded him Japan's highest award that can be given to a non-Japanese, the Order of the Sacred Treasure. 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.â€
The Quality Trilogy, published in 1986, identified a third aspect to quality management, quality planning. In addition to these accomplishments, there is Juran's seminal role as a teacher and lecturer, both at New York University and with the American Management Association. He also worked as a consultant to businesses and organizations in forty countries, and has made many other contributions to the literature in more than twenty books and hundreds of published papers (translated into a total of seventeen languages) as well as dozens of video training programs.
In 1987, Dr. Juran, with a sigh of relief, relinquished his leadership of Juran Institute, Inc. After a triumphant series of lectures in 1993-94, "The Last Word" tour, he ceased all public appearances in order to devote his time to writing projects and family obligations. Since then he has published the History of Quality and other books.
B. Reddy Gottipolu, Section Member, Named ASQ Fellow
View the Fellow letter from the ASQ President.
MN Section Receives Total Quality Award for 2006-07 Year
Brenda Fisk, SAC Chair, on left, Mike Nichols, ASQ President, on right, Annette Borrelli, MN Section Chair-Elect, fifth from left, Greg Olson, MN Section Chair, behind Annette, Kam Gupta, Region 12 Director, third from right