Joseph Juran, along with Deming and Crosby was one of the most famous Total Quality Management gurus. Born in Romania in 1904, he moved to the United States in 1912 and a few years later joined Western Electric as it pioneered the development of statistical methods for quality. He wrote, edited and published the majority of the Quality Control Handbook. Like Deming, Juran taught quality principles to the Japanese in the 1950s which, in turn had a massive impact on contemporary Japanese quality systems.

When implementing the Juran philosophy, instead of proposing a major reorganization of processes within the organization, as did Deming, Juran proposed programs that were designed to fit into a company's current strategic business planning with minimal risk, the usual top-down hierarchial management system Americans use. He claimed that top management speaks in the language of dollars; workers speak in the language of things; and middle management must be able to speak both languages and translate between dollars and things. In turn, Juran advocated the use of quality cost accounting and analysis (top-management language); and increasing conformance to specifications, supported extensively by statistical tools for analysis (worker's language).

The Juran Philosophy
The Quality of a product is defined by Juran as its "fitness for use", by the consumer that is.

Quality is related to "(1) product performance that results in customer satisfaction; (2) freedom from product deficiencies, which avoids customer dissatisfaction". The design of goods, the manufacture process, delivery and service all relate to the fitness of use.

So, when it comes to producing quality, one must look at the firm as a whole and each department to achieve design and conformance quality respectively. Like Deming, Juran supported an endless cycle of activities that includes market research, product development, design, planning for manufacture, purchasing, production process control, inspection and testing, and sales, followed by customer feedback. The interdependency of these functions emphasizes the need for competent company wide quality management. Senior management must play an active and enthusiastic leadership role in the quality management process.

The Quality Trilogy:
1. Quality planning: the process of preparing to meet quality goals
2. Quality control: the process of meeting quality goals during operations
3. Quality improvement: the process of breaking through to unprecedented levels of performance

Juran's noticed that most companies focused most of their efforts on quality control of the trilogy, but felt that more effort should go into quality planning and, especially, quality improvement.

Amongst the fundamental similarities of the Juran and Deming philosophies, we have management commitment, the need for improvement, the use of quality control techniques, and the importance of training.