If you want to ensure that your business runs smoothly, then you will need to remain educated when it comes to the terms and practices that are used in your industry. If you sell a product, then you likely know the importance of quality control, but there is another term that is not used as frequently.
While quality assurance may not be as well-known as quality control, both of them are essential when it comes to ensuring that your business runs smoothly and your products are well-received. In today’s article, we’re going to be covering the differences and similarities between quality assurance vs quality control.
Quality assurance
We’ll be looking at QA and QC in chronological order, as quality assurance measures are taken before your product enters the market. You will need to take time to consider what your customers will want out of your product, and you will provide that through keeping the production quality consistent.
To ensure that QA processes go smoothly, you’ll have to look at your product from the perspective of a customer, and many companies provide demo copies to their employees to test them out. Any action that is taken to improve the quality of a product before it enters production falls under the umbrella of QA.
The advantage of QA is that you can avoid costly mistakes that may ruin the image of your brand before you enter production. Of course, you will also have to consider that QA can often miss issues, so you may end up having to implement QC regardless, so this is not the most economical approach you can take.
Quality control
On the other hand, you have quality control, and the term itself gives you an idea of what to expect. Where QA ensures that your customer will end up receiving a product that should be free of defects from the start, QC attempts to mitigate issues that may pop up once the product has been produced.
The advantage to quality control is that any issues with the product will be discovered by customers, meaning that your business won’t have to use precious resources to find them in the first place. Unfortunately, this can sometimes backfire, especially if customers end up finding serious product defects.
Quality control is a reactive measure, as opposed to QA, which is an active technique that is used to ensure that your product enters the market with the best possible aspects. You may be wondering whether QC or QA will work better for your business, so let’s also take a look at that.
Quality control vs. quality assurance
So which is the better choice between these two options? In the end, you should use both of these techniques to ensure that your product has the best possible quality when it comes to market through QA. QC, on the other hand, will allow your business to correct any errors with the product.
Conclusion
We hope that we’ve been able to properly explain the differences between quality control and quality assurance.
