Joseph Juran, 1904-2008: A Life of Quality Control (1/2)

Recently the business world lost a leader in quality control. Joseph Juran died at the age of one hundred and three. He developed ideas that are still important today to improving the quality of products.

Joseph Juran was born in Braila, Romania. His family came to the United States in nineteen twelve when he was eight. They settled in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He studiedelectricalengineering at the University of Minnesota. He was also the school champion at the game of chess. After college, the Western Electric Company put him to work on mathematical" class="hjdict" word="mathematical" target=_blank>mathematical methods of quality control.

He became interested in the idea he termed "vital few and trivial" class="hjdict" word="trivial" target=_blank>trivial many." This idea is popularly known as the "eighty-twenty rule." It could mean, for example, that eighty percent of manufacturing problems result from twenty percent of the causes.

He named it the "Pareto principle," for the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. A century ago, Pareto observed that eighty percent of the wealth in Italy went to twenty percent of the population.But Joseph Juran came to recognize that he had misnamed this principle. He knew that unequal distribution had long been observed in other areas, not just wealth.

参考译文：

近日，商界一位质量管理领袖约瑟夫·朱兰逝世，享年103岁。他建立的理论至今仍然是改进产品质量的重要理论。

约瑟夫·朱兰生于罗马尼亚布勒伊拉。1912年，8岁的朱兰随家人一起来到美国。他们在明尼苏达州明尼阿波利斯市定居。他在明尼苏达大学学习电力工程。并且，获得该校的象棋赛冠军。大学毕业后，西方电气公司安排他从事有关质量控制数学方法的工作。

他开始对他称为"重要的少数和琐碎的多数"的原理感兴趣。人们称该原理为"二八定律"。也就是说，例如，80%的生产制造问题是因20%的原因造成的。

他把该原理以意大利经济学家维弗烈度·伯莱图命名，称"伯莱图法则"。一百年前，伯莱图观察到80%的意大利财富集中于20%的意大利人口中。但是，约瑟夫·朱兰认识到，他错误的命名了该法则。他认识到，长久以来，不光是在财富方面，在其他领域中也存在着不均等的分配。

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