In the last week or so various theories and quotes from two of the titans of modern quality management have been presented on The Trailer. Deming and Crosby have their unique perspectives and quality management processes. If we worked to adapt insights from even one of them, we'd be on the right track to making quality a near 100% reality. There's no one size fits all quality management system and their models aren't for every project or company As you might have guessed from the title of this article, there's a third titan of modern quality management. His name is Joseph M. Juran and he creates a triumvirate of quality management with the other two titans.
Of the three, he might be the biggest curmudgeon. From what I've read about him and by him, he might be the most analytical. The most read works of Deming and Crosby look and read like a regular non-fiction book that you would've found a few years ago at Barnes and Noble before Amazon started to take over the world. Juran wrote what sounds like a simple text on quality because it has handbook in the title. The reality is that Juran's Quality Handbook is 1,136 pages of very detailed information on all thigs quality. It reads like a textbook so there's no humor or entertaining stories - just data, facts and statements backed by hundreds of references. It's so "boring" that it even starts to break down and demonstrate the use of statistics in quality management and decision making.
Juran developed some amazing quality management principles during his career. One of the most well known is one that is named after someone else. When doing his due diligence to find what previous research was sound and relevant to his work, he came across Vilfredo Pareto's work. Pareto had focused his work on economics and sociology when determining that about 20% of the population had about 80% of the wealth. Interesting side note - Pareto was originally a civil engineer before getting into economics later in his career. Back to Juran - he applied Pareto's economic related finding to quality management and named it the Pareto Principle which also became known as the 80/20 rule. Most all of us have framed data and/or decisions within the 80/20 framework giving the name or development a second thought. It's not actually an anecdotally based principle but is based on data driven research.
The 80/20 breakdown is also widely known as "the vital few and the trivial many." While often not nearly as important as the vital 20%, Juran wanted to make sure the 80% was still accounted for and preferred a description of "the vital few and the useful many." We've all been on a project where something small slipped through the cracks and caused a headache. We should do our best to focus on the vital 20% while also making sure the other 80% gets done as well. In the trailer, this might look like the General Superintendent or PM leading, providing substantial supervision or being solely responsible for critical items while deliverables outside of the critical 20% can be delegated and completed with minimal oversight. By correctly identifying and managing the 20% and 80% correctly we can efficiently build a high quality and better world.
Komentarze