Chandrashekhar Hande

Until the Late 1980, Quality function was mainly focussed on Quality control and keep defects and processes under control to which organisation could manage and seep out quality defects to customer. Dr. Joseph Juran presented the Juran Trilogy as a new means to manage Quality at organisation Level.

The Juran Trilogy is considered a universal way of thinking of Quality which is fit for product and services at all levels and functions making it one of the most used quality management practice across the globe.  The three key components of Juran Trilogy are:

1.       Quality Planning (targeting COPQ)

2.       Quality control in operations (targeting Defect control)

3.       Quality Improvement (Targeting CI in Quality)


The above graph visually demonstrates Quality in terms of product efficiency / defects in Y-axis along the time scale in X -Axis. The COPQ is a part which is prior to the operational induction of new product or service in production and is tied into Quality improvement to develop new products with cyclic approach of learnings.

Quality Planning:   All of the Quality planning starts from working backward and understanding customer needs and developing products and services to meet the customer demands from the features of the product or service. One of the key elements in Quality planning is VOC( Voice of customer) and COPQ ( Cost of poor quality) to gather inputs both from customer externally and internally. This helps to define and design product/service features and devise relevant process enabling customer needs.

Quality Control:  once processes are defined, During production the Quality control adheres to specification limits ( acceptable deficiencies ) to keep the process under control  through periodic checks, Audits and inspection to track the quality metrics and take corrective and Preventive actions (CAPA) if the process get out of control.  This is a reactive process (Fire fighting) of monitoring and correcting while these deficiencies could be tracked back to bad Quality planning processes.

Quality Improvement: This part of the trilogy focusses mainly on Quality improvement opportunities for the product, process or service. This is done through use of Statistical Analysis, TQM or other Quality improvement tools to reduce deficiencies further to remain competitive and meet customer requirements.

The three processes are interlinked which finally connects to our purpose of Quality Management system. The Juran Trilogy and Deming’s Cycle are some of the pioneering work in establishing the TQM methodology which is widely used in the 1980s and 1990s.


 
Example of of Juran’s cycle elements Implementation at Miniature motor Manufacturing Organisation

1.       Quality Control and Quality Improvement for Coils defects:  One of the Largest organisations of DC Stepper Motors introduced Juran’s principle for quality control and improvement mechanism when several manufacturing facilities were transferred from EU to Asia in the late 1990 and early 2000. Some of the key initiative under Quality control and improvement were development of Statistical process Control mechanism (Control charts, Pareto, fishbone to name a few) for solving issues with high rejection rates of Coils and Endcaps in motors due to process changes, training, SOP migration and technology transfers.

2.        Quality Improvement used for New Product Design: Some of the application of the Stepper motors manufactured were used in Aerospace Industry. key inputs from VOC was used to analyse the failure pattern from customers and defect rate acceptable to this industry was used develop new products for application in aerospace. The organisation also worked backward to perform FMEA analysis to review Failure modes due to either quality, workmanship or Equipment / process which involved wider functions such as supply chain, Change Management, R&D and production. This internal analysis and external customer inputs were used to build new Quality products and improved the defect rates by over 35%  due to failures of endcaps and Coils.

3.        Quality Planning Inputs: New Vendor Quality strategy and Inhouse Quality planning was performed with revised sets of inputs from the VOC and FMEA analysis to build interdepartmental Quality Policies at the stepper motor Manufacturing site. There were also key strategic decision on inhouse vs Outsource Quality management developed to improve efficiencies and reduce rework due to defects in assembly line.