Mohammad Jaid Alam

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Difference between Q uality A ssurance and Q uality Control

ISO 9000- Definition

Quality Quality

Control: A part of quality management focused on fullling quality requirements. Assurance: A part of quality management focused on providing condence that quality

requirements will be fullled.

Quality Control
What: The activities or techniques used to achieve and maintain the product quality,Process and service. How: Finding & eliminating causes of quality problems through tools & equipment so That customers requirements are continually met.
U U U U

Quality Assurance
What: Prevention of quality problems through planned and systematic activities including documentation. How: Establish a good quality management system and the assessment of its adequacy & conformance audit of the operation system & the review of the system itself.
U U U U

Quality Control just measures and determines the quality level of products or services. It is a
process itself.

Quality Assurance is a complete system to assure the quality of products or services. It is not only
a process, but a complete system including also control. It is a way of management

Quality Control is the process involved within the system to ensure job management, competence
and performance during the manufacturing of the product or service to ensure it meets the Quality plan as designed.

Quality Assurance is a system for evaluating performance, service, of the quality of a product
against a system, standard or specied requirement for customers.

Article 1
By the end of the Second World War, mass production of various kinds of products was at its peak. Manufacturing companies have begun to produce different kinds of products that are then sold to the public in large quantities. As a result, there had been also an

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increase in the number of defective products that were sold in the market. To minimize this, a shift was done within business organizations in order to give more importance to the quality of the products that are manufactured and sold. Even today, business organizations, regardless of their size, give importance to the quality of the products and services that they provide their customers above everything else. More often than not, the terms quality assurance and quality control have been interchanged. But actually, these refer to two different concepts. Quality control focuses more on failure detection. It comprises various methods, systems and strategies in order to determine certain areas which are below the expectations and standards of the company to its products and services. Quality control aims to answer the question what went wrong? and what can be done to remedy it? On the other hand, quality assurance pertains to the processes and procedures which aim to foresee any potential failure that may occur in order to prevent this from happening even before it happens. Quality assurance procedures and methodologies are often provided during the planning stage and conceptualization stage of a particular product or service in order to determine its feasibility and profitability. Quality assurance encompasses all the potential threats towards the product and service that may arise in the future, particularly when it comes to product safety, legal matters and the like. Quality control is a part of quality assurance in the sense that they determine what the potential problems that can happen, and how these problems may be properly address to minimize its impact to the business organization as a whole. Between the two, business organizations tend to focus more on quality assurance as opposed to quality control. This is in order to prevent any loss of income that can be incurred by the business organization and the increase in the expenses that will be generated as a result of remedying the problems that arose as a result of launching a particular product or service. It is for this reason why business organizations take some time before they launch a new product or add a new service feature to their current list of products and services.

Mohammad Jaid Alam Article 2

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Whether it is a product, process, service or a system, quality is of paramount importance. Quality control, and quality assurance are two terms that are often encountered in any organization and people are often confused by the difference between these two terms. Though closely related, and basically concerned with quality, these are different approaches taken for achieving similar ends. This article will highlight the features of quality assurance and quality control to enable to appreciate the terms in a better manner. While quality control is a set of activities designed to evaluate a developed product, quality assurance or guarantee pertains to activities that are designed to ensure that the development and maintenance process is adequate and the system meets its objectives. Quality control focuses on finding defects or anomalies in the deliverables and checking if the defined requirements are the right requirements. Testing is one example of a quality control activity, but there are many more such activities that make up quality control. Quality assurance ensures that the process is well defined and appropriate. Some examples of quality assurance are methodology and standards development. Any quality assurance review would typically focus on the process aspect of a project or task, for example, are requirements being defined at a level of detail that is accepted and proper. The most notable difference between quality assurance and quality control is that while QC is product oriented, QA is process oriented. Since testing checks the quality of a product, it classifies in the domain of QC. When you are testing a product for quality, you are not assuring its quality, you are controlling it. Another differentiation between QA and QC is that while QA makes sure that what you are doing are right things in the right manner while QC ensures that the results of what you have done are as per your expectations. The difference between QA and QC is also one of power and control. QC is under control of development while QA controls development. QA normally precedes QC. QA is undertaken before starting a project whereas QC begins once the project has been

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completed. During QA, requirements of customers are defined while during QC, the product is tested to ensure it meets the quality set out initially. As such, QA is a proactive or preventive measure to avoid defects whereas QC is a corrective measure to identify any defects so as to correct them. However, both QC and QA are highly interdependent. The QA department relies largely on the feedback it receives from the QC department. If there are any problems, the same are conveyed by QC department to QA department which makes suitable changes in the process so as to avoid these problems in future.

Summary
Both quality assurance and quality control have same objective but they differ in approaches and style. They are strongly interdependent which makes it difficult to pinpoint the differences. To make matters worse, in some organizations, both functions are performed by a single department.

For A rticle on Q uality visit my blog http:/ / iso-qms.blogspot.com/ Link to Previous A rticles
1. What is ISO 9000? 2. Quality Glossary A to Z 3. The Quality Control Audit - By Kaoru Ishikwa 4. The eight principles of quality management 5. Executive Summary of the 14 Toyota Way Principles 6. Toyota Production System

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