Whoever you are, whatever you have achieved you should recognise the achievements of others

Dr Joseph Juran rose from poverty to be an internationally respected management consultant who specialised in quality. His work included popularising the use of the Pareto Principle and creating  The Juran Trilogy. Juran focussed on the role of management in quality. 

He wrote and contributed to many books including six volumes of Juran’s Quality Handbook.

He was a manager for Bell Telephones at the Hawthorne Works and later was a professor of industrial engineering at New York University, where he taught quality management.

After World War Two he worked in Japan and helped rebuild the Japanese economy. In 1981 he was awarded the Second Order of Sacred Treasure by the Emperor of Japan. 

Juran consulted internationally, including working with Steve Jobs. 

In 1992 he received the National Technology Medal from the President of the United States.

These are considerable achievements for which Juran is quite rightly respected. 

However, he also let himself down by how he wrote about his peers. How we treat people is so important.

Walter Shewhart died in 1967 and the August 1967 edition of Industrial Quality Control was dedicated to the memory of Walter Shewhart “in view of his outstanding achievements”[1]. Juran contributed to that edition of the magazine by writing that Shewhart was “at that stage mainly impractical and unintelligible[2]” and was “a competent promoter”[2]. This is an extraordinary way to write about Shewhart, who had created control charts and the plan-do-study-act cycle and had just died. John Willis and Derek Lewis have made an entertaining podcast about Juran’s article: Legacy of Quality Control Pioneers.

Juran wrote his autobiography after W. Edwards Deming had died and in it, Juran wrote that Deming “believed his wishful thinking“[3] that the courses he gave in 1950 were “the dominant reasons for Japan’s emergence as the world quality leader”[3]. Instead of showing that his 1950 lectures were the dominant cause of Japan’s transformation Deming showed several reasons for Japan’s rise. Deming wrote, in addition to his own role in 1950, about the role of the Japanese in initiating the transformation of the Japanese economy. He wrote about the work of the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) in 1948 and 1949, and its later role in educating management, engineers and supervisors. He did write about his role in 1950 but he also wrote the roles of others including Ichiro Ishikawa, Kaoru Ishikawa, Ken’ichi Koyanagi and Joseph Juran.[4]

In Juran’s Quality Handbook 6th Edition, which was published after Deming had died, Juran wrote that Deming defined quality as “conformance to requirements”[5]. I can’t find a quote from Deming in which he defines quality in that way. Deming wrote that “quality can be defined only in terms of the agent”[6], which defines quality as being subjective.

When I searched to see if Shewhart or Deming criticised Juran, I found that Deming praised him. Deming wrote that Juran’s “masterful teaching gave Japanese management new insight into management’s responsibility for improvement of quality”.[7] 

I have found so much value in Juran’s work, however, the way he wrote about his peers leaves me speechless. We should treat each other well. The lesson to me is that whoever you are, whatever you have achieved you should recognise the achievements of others.

Thank you to Rob Park for helping me organise my thoughts.

References

[1] Walter Shewhart ASQC 1967 – Quality Leadership (1967, p3)

[2] Walter Shewhart ASQC 1967 – Quality Leadership (1967, p50)

[3] Architect of Quality by Joseph Juran (2004, p302)

[4] Out of the Crisis by W. Edwards Deming (1982, p486)

[5] Juran’s Quality Handbook 6th Edition by Joseph E. DeFoe and Joseph Juran (2010, “How to think about quality”) 

[6] Out of the Crisis by W. Edwards Deming (1982, p168)

[7] Out of the Crisis by W. Edwards Deming (1982, p489)