Quality Assurance and Quality Control — What you need to know

We usually need to explain what the distinction between quality assurance and quality control is. The most effective is for us to write down an article concerning it.

Here is a short version for quality assurance and quality control:

QA = all the activities that aim at making sure an certain level of quality. It includes process what the requirement are + putting in place a correct management system + QC.

QC = only the activities that comprises checking whether conformity is achieved or not. Within the context of a buyer who must secure his product quality, QC means that checking if the specifications are revered in production. And it interprets into 2 types of activities: on-site inspections (statistical quality control) & laboratory testing (only on some samples taken out of bulk production).

Here is more different version for quality assurance and quality control:

1. Good Quality Assurance takes time however is worth it

For an importer purchasing finished goods from Asia, QA includes the following steps:

• Ensuring the design is “manufacturing-friendly” and can’t cause defects
• Auditing and approving factories based a relevant listing
• Getting the manufacturer’s approval of the standard control plan
• Writing down detailed product specifications, and obtaining the manufacturer’s approval
• Identifying failure points with production engineers, and removing them (back to design)
• Following pre-production sampling closely, and if attainable launching a pilot run
• Ensuring that lessons from sampling are going to be taken under consideration for production
• Performing QC at one or many points of production
• Following up with corrective/preventive action plans, once applicable
• Re-engineering production processes (to cut back opportunities for errors)
• Revising product specifications for next production batch

2. QC is part of QA

It is vital to grasp that QA includes QC. It’s not “either QA or QC”. Good QA relies on QC, since the information from inspection is necessary to implement corrective and preventive measures.

3. QA is continually mixed up with QC

“QA” and “QC” are usually used interchangeably. “QA” sound smarter than “QC”, thus QA is often substituted to QC. I have met with “QA technicians” who actually do quality control every day.