Juran's Quality Trilogy

 Explain three (3) major quality processes of Juran’s Quality Trilogy.

Joseph M. Juran believes an organization can manage for quality. Juran defined quality as “fitness for use” or in which “product meets customer needs and is free of deficiency or failure”. He believes quality starts with knowing who the customers are and what the customers need. To achieve quality Juran emphasized that the management team should commit to not only the customers but also the suppliers and the most importantly the employees.

Customer, as suggested by Juran as “ … anyone who receives or is affected by the product or process…” of a target department. There are internal customers and external customer one organization should recognize. The internal customers are those who work within the organization, who demand services or goods provided by other department within the same organization. While the external customers are those who did not work with the organization, and are demanding for goods and services of the organization.

Joseph Juran describes quality management as the “Quality trilogy”. The Juran Trilogy of Quality consists of three basic quality oriented process management, which are:

1. Quality planning;
2. Quality control; and
3. Quality improvement.

Quality Planning focuses on ensuring that the goals of quality can be achieved within and through operational activities. In order to do that, the management team would have first, to identify their customers and determining their needs and demand. Then should they begin developing and design products and processes that will be able to meet customers need and to ensure that the goals of quality can be achieved under and through operational activities or actual production process. Quality planning can also be defined as simple as setting goals of the organization and establishing the means required to reach the goals.

The steps in quality planning process are as follow:

1. Identify the customers, the internal or external customers, those who will be impacted by the process or efforts to meet the quality goals
2. Determine the customer’s needs. The organization must recognize the needs of the customers and specifying the product features that will satisfy those needs at minimum cost or efficient cost.
3. Develop processes that will be able to produce efficiently the product features that respond to customers’ needs.
4. Establishing quality goals, which is to meet the needs of customers at the lowest cost with supplier partners on board
5. Design and Establish process controls to demonstrate and proving that the process is capable to achieve its quality goals under operating conditions
6. Transfer the resulting plans to operating forces

Figure 1: 3SIMPLE STEPS IN QUALITY PLANNING PROCESS

Quality Control’s objective is to document or declare that quality goals are achieved during manufacturing process. Quality control involving the execution of plans or to operate the process to meet the established quality goals, besides monitoring operations that performs with optimal effectiveness, to correct process and to detect differences between actual performance and goals.

Quality control consists of six general steps as follow:

1. Choosing control subjects. Select what to control, for example the external color of a Proton Preve, which should be Pearl White Metallic.
2. Choosing units of measurement. For above example, the accuracy to the sample color of 99.99%.The unit of measurement is in percentage.
3. Establishing a measurement procedure or methods. In this case, computer testing on the external color of each Proton Preve must be done in a room with no pollutants to obtain optimum test result.
4. Measure and evaluate actual quality performance. After the car has been tested, compare the accuracy percentage to that of the sample color.
5. Interpreting differences and compares actual performance to quality goals. The test shows the slight difference of 1.5% from the sample color due to the mistake of a new staff, who get the wrong color code and mixing the wrong color.
6. Taking action to correct the differences between the real performance and what the pre-established standard should be. Now, the car has been printed in wrong color by inexperience worker. Engineers in the company worked out a plan to adjust the color to as close as 99% accuracy. And the inexperience worker was send to training to improve his skill in mixing color for cars.

Figure 2: 6 STEPS OF QUALITY CONTROL

Quality Improvement could be explained as to take the established process to a newer and better level in order to produced goods or services of better qualities by using the resources efficiently, which are to reduce wastages, errors, and prolonged the usability of the goods / services. Few quality experts define quality improvement as obtaining breakthrough in quality performance/ to create a new standard of excellence, to reduce chronic waste to a much lower level.

Quality improvement involved four main steps:

1. Establish the infrastructure to secure annual quality improvement. The management team should inspect the machines are in good condition, fund are enough for the company to expand and improve, and the staff are ready to change and etc.
2. Identify needs for improvement or so called the improvement projects. For each round of project, the management should gather feedback from the ground staff  of their problem through the process and also from the customer regarding the product. After identifying which area to be improved, the management team should immediately draw up a plan to improve.
3. Establish project teams to each project, who would be responsible for bringing the project to a successful conclusion. The management team, especially the top management, should, in a meeting or discussion with middle level managers, deciding the members of the project team to execute the improvement plan.
4. Provide resources, motivation and training needed to diagnose the cause, stimulate establishment of remedies, provide corrective and preventive action & establish controls to hold the gains. The shareholders play an important role in this part, as they need to trust the management team of the company by allowing adequate fund to be allocated for improvement programs. The top management should give motivation and morale support for the project team. Cooperation among the project team members are the most important key for this step to be successful.

The importance of these trilogy nonetheless is for the gain of everyone, from the supplier to the producer and the consumers.

Quality planning is extremely important as it is a stage of development of products features and establishment of processes to achieve the quality goals and  to fulfill the needs of the customers. It also included an engineering process for designing new products, a production process for making goods, or a service process for responding to customer requests.

Quality control comprised statistical tools used to monitor and improve the processes involved. Control items such as defects in products, response time to customers, billing accuracy could be identifying in this stage.

Quality improvement has not less important as it could help in reduction of rework or cycle time reduction and elimination of any chronic quality issues.

The Juran Trilogy Diagram as shown below:

horizontal axis: time

vertical axis: cost of poor quality

Managers, the planners are responsible for the product and process design to meet the customer needs