Are you familiar with the terms Quality Assurance & Quality Control? How it can grow your brand value to new heights?
To understand the definitions better, let’s discuss the term ‘Quality’.
Quality is meeting the necessity, assumption, and requirements of the client and is liberated from the imperfections, needs, and significant variations. These are some principles that need to follow to fulfill the client’s necessities.
Why Quality Management is important?
Quality Management makes the products more reliable and durable. It is the quality that differentiates the product from our competitors.
Figure: Objectives of Quality Management
Quality Assurance
Quality Assurance is a procedure that ensures the quality of a product/service provided to the customers. It focuses on improving the standards of the product to satisfy the needs of the clients as per the government norms.
Types of QA Software Tools
Following are the types of software testing tools that ensure the quality of the services.
- Testing (Load Testing, Automations, Integration, Bug Testing)
- Infrastructure (Release Management, Source Control)
- Analytics & Monitoring (Security Testing, Business Analytics, Performance Monitoring)
- Customer Support (CRM)
- Coding (Peer Code reviews, Code Analysis)
How to conduct the Quality Assurance process?
The QA process involves the PDCA model:
- Plan: Organizations need to plan the procedures & policies that can deliver the product of the utmost quality.
- Do: Testing the product and ‘do’ the recommended changes.
- Check: Make sure the product is meeting the expectations as per the planned blueprint.
- Act: Keeping a check & gradually changing the policies to make sure the quality is maintained with minimum wastage of resources.
Best Practices ensuring QA
Some of the best practices to ensure QA includes- Bug fixes in software, forming a sincere security & performance analysis team, creating robust testing surrounding, allotting proper timings for the procedure, and integrating automated testing to save cost and duplication of efforts.
Quality Control
QC is a set of procedures that are set to make sure the product or service is completed rightly. It creates a surrounding where the management & employees join together to get the best out of each other. QC is quite identical to QA but not similar.
The main objectives of QC are:
- Gain Customer Loyalty: QC focuses on gaining customer loyalty by making manufacturing products that meet customer expectations by ensuring the product is of the utmost quality.
- Customer Satisfaction: QC inspires management & employees to create high-quality efficient goods to satisfy the customers’ needs & wants.
- Cost Reduction: QC help in reducing the costs of production resulting in high revenue and brand value.
What are the types of Quality Control Tools?
QC tools help in keeping a check on the efficiency of a product like:
- Histogram- To measure the frequency of the defects.
- Pareto Chart- To identify the problem and its solutions.
- Checklists- A list that helps in checking the manufacturing procedure to sell a product.
- Control Chart- To measure the outcomes & variations.
- Fishbone Diagram- To determine the causes of a specific problem.
Understanding the Internal & External Quality Control
Internal Quality Control: It means checking the internal affairs of an organization over which the management has control. For Example- System analysis, manufacturing plant maintenance, and account auditing.
External Quality Control: Some specific products require an external quality control check. For example- a food factory that requires approval from the FDA department to make sure the production is done as per the government policies.
The Difference
| Quality Assurance | Quality Control |
| QA is a process that assures the quality request will be achieved | QC is a process that intends to achieve quality requests |
| QA is a process to create deliverables | QC is a process to verify deliverables |
| QA is a managing tool | QC is a corrective tool |
| Process-Oriented | Product-Oriented |
| Proactive Process | Reactive Process |
| QA includes all the activities of QC | QC is the stage of final inspection. |
| Tries to prevent defects | Tries to fix and fix the defect in the developing stage of a product. |
| Every staff member is responsible for the Quality Assurance of a product | A specific team is assigned to check the Quality Control of a product |
Summary
To put it in a nutshell, we can say that QC is a part of QA. Both are different but have the same objective of satisfying customer needs while making sure the quality is not compromised.
- QA & QC are parts of Quality Management.
- QA is a broader concept than QC but QC.
- QA works using the PDCA model.
- QC can be performed using various checklists, bars, and diagrams.