Differences and Similarities between Juran and Crosby - Coursework Example

DIFFERENCES AND SIMILARITIES BETWEEN JURAN AND CROSBY Student’s Name Course Professor’s Name University City (State) Date Introduction Joseph Juran and Crosby have had some significant contributions in the field of management and especially quality management. Despite the two scholars informing a lot on quality management, they held key similarities and differences in their line of work. In a nutshell, looking at their differences, Crosby perceived quality as the paying attention to the requirements. On the contrary, Juran, on the other hand, saw quality as the aspect of fitness for particular attention. Crosby made a vibrant contribution from his argument that concerning freeness of quality (Crosby,1980). Owing to his school of thoughts, it is hard to quantify the quality’s cost. On the other hand, Juran had outstanding contributions to the quality movement. He based his ideas on the costs and definitions of quality. The below essay delineates some of the main differences, perspectives as well as similarities akin to each the aforementioned scholar’s viewpoints. Perspective First off, Juran’s work was mainly rooted in the firm’s planning strategies and minimal rejections in risk. In his work on quality management, Juran held that different workers in a workplace possess different priorities of the existing or arising factors. In addition, those in top management possess power in the form of monetary terms and perceive money as being crucial. They go ahead and execute decisions or speak in monetary terms. On the contrary, employees see things as being imperative. This is different from the mid- management team who hold both the things and the money as being integral factors to the organization and therefore talks in terms of both things and money. From his perspective, Juran sees quality management as a never ending process that is interconnected with different functional units working in harmony with each other in terms of manufacturing, feedback, process control and testing to achieve a status quo within the organization. Also, Juran held that there are three common aspects of quality that he saw as the most important facets of quality management. These aspects included quality control, quality planning, and quality management (Juran and Jran, 1989). Second off, looking at Crosby’s perspective, his works on quality management had strong regards to elements of quality improvement as well as absolutes of quality management. According to Crosby, the key absolutes to quality management more focused on conformance to requirements and not on attractiveness. Crosby perceived quality management as not having a thing to do with the economics of quality or the quality of the problem. Instead, he held that measure of performance could only be perceived from a cost of quality and elements of improvement perspective. Such elements included education, the determination as well as implementation (Crosby, 1992). Similarities Juran and Crosby have key similarities in their works on quality management. First of all, one of the key similarities is based on the level of management’s responsibility. Both Juran and Crosby holds that senior management including but not limited to managers, operators, and directors have the main duty and accountability of ensuring that quality of goods and services is maintained. In specific, same as Juran, Crosby thinks that the senior management possesses all the duties to ensure that quality is kept at the top notch. In addition, sharing Crosby’s sentiments, Juran holds that senior management carries about 80 percent mandate of ensuring goods and services are of the required quality. The key point between their similarities is that they both stress that top management support, as well as quality commitment, are of great importance. In addition, both scholars hold that quality management should make sure that communication and the spirit of teamwork are embraced on all levels across company’s hierarchies. According to them, communication and teamwork ensure that a company fetches the best out of their employees by supporting ideas of innovations and inventions as well as nurturing young talents. In addition, communication enables workers to air their grievances to the right channels of management thus improving overall working conditions and performance of a firm. On the same note, the scholars held that in order to positively impact on quality of management, continuous training and education for the company’s stakeholders and especially workers and management team is a key aspect. As well, ensuring that a company has a well-defined organizational culture significantly impacts on the aforementioned aspect. The bottom line for both scholars was that teamwork, efficient and effective communication is essential at all levels within an organization. Secondly, Crosby and Juran share a common idea that training and education are two essential aspects that help in nurturing a uniform language and spirit of quality in an organisation. Provision of appropriate and sufficient support, it is easy for a firm to achieve conformation on quality interpretation. For this reason, it is important to have effective cooperation and communication strategies. Also, they both view the cost of quality as being a focus of measurement. In addition, they both use the reduction of cost as a base line for measuring efficiency and effectiveness of the procedure used to meet customer demands and requirements (Kim, and Nakhai, 2008). Third off, the two scholars were quite passionate and enthusiastic about the role played by quality in business operations and activities. They both felt that quality is an integral aspect that must be embraced on all levels in any organization. In addition, they perceived quality management as the core point for company’s effectiveness and performance (Juran, 2004). While the two scholars took a different perspective to their work by holding different definitions of quality of management, they all seem to point in the same direction that is the quality of management and how it can be improved. The aim to find working solutions to the ways quality management can be achieved brings both scholars to the same school of thought thereby advocating for a common goal and objective but using different paradigms to do so. The means justifies the end, which means that regardless of the path taken by the two scholars; the destination remains the same thus making their targets similar (Crosby, 1980). Fourth off, both of the gurus recognises the merits entwined with single suppliers, but they choose to take a conservative strategy that preaches on minimising the number of suppliers. They both agree on the fact that, in situations where a good or service is critical, then having multiple suppliers is equally crucial. As such, it is almost impossible that a company will suffer from the effects of strikes, mechanical breakdowns, accidents or any other problem that may face the supplier (Juran, 1992). Differences While one might end up thinking that both scholars had similar ideas, Juran and Crosby have key differences especially on the approaches and perspectives to the quality of management. Juran, unlike Crosby, was more oriented in statistical approaches by putting emphasises on the various facets of quality management (Juran, 1992). On the other hand, unlike Juran, Crosby in his zero defects approach goes beyond reasonable levels. Crosby failed to recognise that error is to human beings hence chances of having a zero defect situation is almost zero. In addition, Crosby was more idealistic compared to Juran in regard to the production of materials that were highly quality related such as lecture series and videos. Additionally, there exist disparities in their fundamental approaches including supplier relationship, measurement, and goal setting. According to Crosby, the sole goal is to have defect- free goods and services. However, he puts emphases on organizations laying down intermediate goals that should help them in becoming defect- free firms. According to Crosby, a quality good or service only came to be if the procedure itself lays within the stipulations or specification limits (Crosby, 1992). On the other hand, Juran considers a well-drafted piece of goals for the workers and a framework for meeting them. Juran focuses on firms-wide objectives and quality- related goals but puts more emphases deploying goals throughout the company. He provides that firm’s strategic goals need to be deployed to each and every stakeholder within all the divisions of the organisation (Juran and Jran, 1989) Also, Crosby proposes a zero defect day which is used by managers to reaffirm their commitment to quality. During this day, managers communicate the commitment to the workers as well. On the contrary, Juran proposes an annual quality program. The program is used by top management to propagate management commitment to ensuring quality improvement. Despite Cosby’s and Juran motives relating to each other, they both took a different approach or perspectives to address their issues of concern (Juran, 2004). Reference List Kim, S. and Nakhai, B., 2008. The dynamics of quality costs in continuous improvement. International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, 25(8), pp.842-859. Juran, J.M. (1992) Juran on quality by design: The new steps for planning quality into goods and services. New York: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group. Juran, J.M. and Jran, J.M. (1989) Juran on Leadership for quality: An executive handbook. New York: Collier Macmillan 1989. Crosby, P.B. (1980) Quality is free: The art of making quality certain. New York: New American Library. Crosby, P.B. (1992) Let’s talk quality: 96 questions you always wanted to ask Phil Crosby. New York, NY: Penguin Books. Juran, J. (2004) Management of inspection and quality control. Proquest/Csa Journal Div. Read More