The consultant and expert of the Romanian quality Joseph Juran proposed that a correct Quality Management is achieved through a trilogy of processes:
First, Quality Planning. Planning is based on developing what the customer needs, whether it is a product or a service, and thus satisfying it.
Second, Quality Control. It is the one who supplies the quality standards that will be used for the inspection.
Finally, the Quality Improvement. Usually born from the detection of errors. Finding errors and knowing their origin allows us to find an opportunity to improve the process.
The Juran Trilogy today is a registered trademark and one of the most important legacies of his influential work.
The Juran Trilogy in a graphic way.
SOURCE: “Swear and Quality Planning” – Joseph M. Juran (1988)
Why planning quality?
When an organization does not plan for quality, or has a poor planning process, errors and waste arise from:
Losses in sales due to failures in the product, to comply with the customer’s specifications. Here comes into play the reputation, so difficult to quantify.
Costs of poor quality (of “No Quality”), which can be enormous if we contemplate all the necessary activities to address the customer’s complaint, the rework on the defective product or the replacement for a conforming product. This value can vary between 20 and 40% in organizations without proper planning.
The threats to society. In a highly industrialized world, people have a direct dependence on the quality of the products they consume. As the author defines it, “people live behind the quality protection dams”. In many industries this is even more evident. Think for example of defective products that come from the food industry, or pharmaceutical. Or a car that, due to non-compliance with specifications, could put the health of its occupants at risk.
Proper quality planning is achieved through a deep awareness of the staff about its importance, which is achieved through training and ongoing assistance. The organization must be clear about what results are expected, how the processes should be and what is the responsibility of each member to comply. The rewards should be linked to the results achieved.
Juran defines a ‘roadmap’, a sequence of steps for effective planning:
Identify who the customers are
Determine the needs of those customers.
Translate those needs into the language of the organization.
Develop a product that meets those needs.
Optimize the characteristics of the product to also meet the needs of the organization.
Develop the necessary processes for this purpose.
Optimize processes.
Demonstrate that the process can produce the product under the operating conditions.
Transfer the process to the operating forces.
Satisfying the client’s needs is not an easy task, just because they are changing dynamically and unpredictably.
Quality planning or improvement project to project?
The author proposes this dilemma through a practical example:
“There is an answer in current terms in the case of the manager who is completely surrounded by alligators, he starts to kill alligators, one by one – a sauric version of the improvement project to project – but it never reaches the end, because More and more alligators are still coming out of the swamp The final solution is to drain the swamp In this analogy, improving project by project is the same as sacrificing alligators one by one The new focus of quality planning is to drain the swamp. ”
With this Juran states that improving project to project, only by trial and error, produces good results but with a high cost. The secret lies in the planning, in eliminating those problems at the root, which came from the product’s own design and its processes. Planning is the remedy for those chronic diseases.