It is never too late to reassess how you define quality

We all need to be able to reevaluate issues and concepts. We have also all heard it said that adapting to change is harder for older people. Dr Joseph Juran is one of the significant figures in quality and he changed how he defined quality when he was over 95 years old. 

In the third edition of his Quality Control Handbook, which was published in 1979, he defined quality as “fitness for use”. The fifth edition of the Handbook was published in 1999 and still used  “fitness for use” as its definition of quality. In the sixth edition of his Quality Handbook, which was published in 2010, he changed his definition of quality to “fitness for purpose”. 

Juran was born in 1904 and died in 2008. He was 95 years old when the fifth edition was published and it must have been after the publication of the fifth edition that he reasoned that “quality means fitness for use” was no longer applicable because “more and more service industries use the methods of managing for quality, the prior definition is not applicable enough” [1].

The new definition of quality is in the section called “How to think about quality” in the sixth edition of Juran’s Quality Handbook. This section is worth reading for its insights on understanding quality. The sixth edition of his Handbook was published in 2010 two years after his death at the age of 103, so Juran’s contributions to the Handbook were written when he was aged between 95 and 103. 

Being mentally flexible is something to value. That Juran could reassess and redefine a core concept when he was over 95 years old should make us think that we all should be able to reassess and redefine important issues and concepts such as quality and also that age is not a barrier to mental flexibility.

References

[1] Juran’s Quality Handbook Sixth Edition

Resources about Dr Joseph Juran:

Web pages:

• Dr Juran’s History from the Juran Institute
• Juran Research Center  at the University of Minnesota
• National Medal of Technology and Innovation

YouTube

• An Immigrant’s Gift – a biographical film about Joseph Juran
• Steve Jobs on Joseph Juran and Quality