Guide To Quality Assurance and Quality Control

Quality assurance is a fundamental process in any successful company. It is used to develop effective methods of creating a product or providing a service. Well-implemented quality assurance techniques help companies operate at their best to maximize profits. In this article, you'll learn about why quality assurance is important, the difference between quality assurance and quality control and tips for implementing good quality assurance processes.

What is quality assurance?

Quality assurance is the process by which a company ensures that the products it manufactures are consistent and up to standards. An organization's quality assurance protocols include evaluating all phases of production to find areas for improvement. Quality assurance is a proactive approach that seeks to prevent problems from occurring.

Quality assurance processes usually follow a cycle called PDCA, which means:

• Plan: A company creates the objective of the process, usually to deliver a high-quality product or service.

• Do: The quality assurance team develops the process and tests it to ensure it will work.

• Check: The quality assurance team and project managers monitor the implemented process to see if it meets the original objective.

• Act: The QA team changes the process if needed to produce a quality product based on predetermined standards.

How is quality assurance different from quality control?

Although often mistakenly used interchangeably with quality control, quality assurance is actually a separate field from quality control. Here are the key differences between quality assurance and quality control:

• Quality assurance focuses on the process of creating a product based on standards, while quality control tests finished products to make sure they meet the standards.
  

• Quality assurance is a proactive method of ensuring products meet standards, while quality control is reactive, fixing issues after they happen.
  

• Quality assurance involves finding ways to prevent defects, while quality control identifies defects.
  

• Quality assurance focuses only on the process while quality control focuses on the product.

For example, a company is developing a new cellphone. The quality assurance team creates the process for manufacturing the cellphone so that the business can mass-produce the product with minimal issues. Once the company begins manufacturing the phones, quality control checks the phones to make sure there are no defects before selling them to customers.

Why is quality assurance important?

Consistently producing high-quality products that work well and last long is an excellent way to build a positive reputation with consumers. A functioning quality assurance department is an important part of the development process. By ensuring that the production line is performing to set standards, quality assurance makes the process of developing high-quality products easier and more successful.

A properly optimized manufacturing line also makes it easier for employees to perform their jobs and produce the merchandise being manufactured as quickly as possible without sacrificing the quality of the final product.

Quality assurance tips

If you work in quality assurance, here are some important tips to help you perform at your best:

• Document your policies.

• Listen to your coworkers.

• Start with obvious problems and build.

• Get creative.

• Implement changes and monitor the results.

• Accept change.

Document your policies

Consistency is an important part of quality assurance. When performing quality assurance on different parts of your process, make sure to document everything you do. When you're successful, you can refer back to your documentation so you can continue to use the same ideas.

Documentation can also help your coworkers and manager identify your processes, making it easier to collaborate on different projects. If a team member has a question about your work, they can refer to the documentation to see what you've tried already so they don't repeat your work.

Listen to your coworkers

Quality assurance is almost always a team effort, so collaborating with your coworkers is essential. It can be helpful to hold regular team meetings so you can discuss progress with your coworkers and brainstorm together when you encounter obstacles. Value your coworkers' suggestions and try to use them in your work to improve processes.

Start with obvious problems and build

When developing new quality assurance strategies, start with the issues that are most apparent and for which you are most confident in your solution. This focused approach allows you to minimize variables by reducing the number of changes being implemented at once. This makes it easier to assess the success of the changes and determine if they were helpful. Once you have fixed the first issues, you can devote more resources to any smaller concerns that remain.

Get creative

If you have a problem in your production process and you can not find a solution using traditional troubleshooting, a creative solution may be the answer. This is an area where speaking with your coworkers can be helpful. More minds thinking about the issue raises the chances of somebody having an idea that merits consideration.

Standard troubleshooting solutions provide an excellent starting point, but creativity helps when troubleshooting does not solve the problem. Having a creative mind can be a big boost as a quality assurance professional when all the usual fixes don't seem to be getting your standards where you need them to be.

Implement changes and monitor the results

Making an informed decision is important during the quality control process, but you should always monitor your results to make sure everything works as planned. Anytime you make changes to your production process, it's important to oversee your results to make sure you're actually seeing the improvements you want. Document everything so you know that what you've tried already can be eliminated from your strategy. It can be helpful to have several processes ready to try if one doesn't work as expected.

Accept change

A successful QA professional should be willing to make changes as soon as one of their suggestions does not work as intended. Remember that making changes is a sign of flexibility and professionalism and shows you put the company's best interest over your pride.

You should always pay attention to the results of your changes, both in the form of products being created as well as how the changes affect your coworkers. Monitoring this feedback allows you to see which changes are successful and identify the next area to address in optimizing product quality.