Juran's Interview

QD: As the 20th century draws to a close, what has been quality's most significant achievement?
Juran: One of the major events of our century has been Japan's rise to a state of an economic superpower, second only to the United States and ahead of nations like Great Britain and Germany. That's a big event. An important question is, how did they get there?
My assertion is, they never would have gotten there if it hadn't been for the quality revolution in Japan. That quality revolution took several decades, from the time they got into it until it came to full flower. That took the 1950s, the 1960s and well into the 1970s before they had overtaken the West. And, of course, that had enormous consequences. That forced the West to undertake its own counterrevolution, which started in the 1980s.
In the 1990s--and it will extend well into the next century--we're going to see the West scaling up its quality revolution. My belief is that historians in later decades will look back on the 21st century as the Century of Quality, much as the 20th century has been the Century of Productivity, largely following Frederick Taylor's model.


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