Quality Assurance vs Quality Control – The Difference Between Them

Quality Assurance (QA) refers to the process used to create the deliverables, and can be performed by a manager, client, or even a third-party reviewer.

Examples of quality assurance include management procedures, process checklists, project audits and methodology and standards development.

Quality Control (QC) refers to quality related activities associated with the creation of project deliverables.

Quality control approach is useful to verify that deliverables are of acceptable quality and that they are complete and correct.

Examples of quality control activities include inspection / testing, deliverable peer reviews and the testing process.

quality assurance vs quality control

Many people including even some quality professionals do not know what is difference between quality control and quality assurance?

Some people use both these terms often interchangeably. However, both terms are different in meaning as well as their purpose and application.

Given here are main comparison points of quality assurance and quality control.

QA vs QC Approach

Quality assurance is a sort of guarantee that basis upon the process approach.

In any organization its quality monitoring and assurance systems ensure that the processes and systems are developed and adhered in such a way that the deliverables are of good quality.

This process is meant to produce defect-free goods or services which means being right the first time with no or minimum rework.

On the other hand quality control is product-based approach.

It checks whether the deliverables satisfy the quality requirements as well as the specifications of the customers or not.

Depending upon the results, suitable corrective action is taken by quality control personnel.

Sequence of Quality Assurance and Quality Control Application

One of the major points of qa vs qc is that assurance of quality is done before starting a project or production, whereas the quality control begins once the product manufacturing or production starts.

During assurance of quality or monitoring process, the requirements of the customers are defined.

Based on those requirements, the processes and systems are established and documented.

All this is done to ensure that the requirements of the customers are met stringently.

After manufacturing the product, the quality control process begins. Based on the customer requirements and standards developed during the quality guarantee process, the quality control department checks whether the manufactured product meets all those requirements or not.

So, assurance of quality is a proactive or preventive process to avoid defects whereas quality control is a corrective process to identify the defects in order to correct them.

Major QA QC Activities 

Most activities falling under the purview of quality guarantee or its assurance are performed by managers, customers, and third party auditors.

These activities include process documentation, establishing standards, developing checklists, conducting internal audits, conducting external audits, failure mode effect analysis and training.

On the other hand engineers, inspectors, and supervisors on the shop floor perform quality control activities.

Their activities include performing and receiving inspection, final inspection, in-process inspection etc.

Interdependence of QA vs QC Quality Control vs Quality Assurance

Quality control and quality assurance activities are largely interdependent. The quality assurance department relies mostly on the feedback provided by the quality controller department.

For example, if there are recurrent problem with the quality of the products, then the quality control department provides feedback to the quality monitoring and assurance personnel that there is a problem in the process or system that is causing product quality problems.

Then the quality assurance department determines the root cause of the problem and then brings changes to the process to ensure that there are no quality issues in future.

Similarly, the quality control department follows the guidelines and standards established by QA department to check whether deliverables meet the quality requirements or not.

Hence, both these departments are essential to maintain good quality of the deliverables. These two approaches integrated with other frameworks can form total quality management for an organization.

Although both quality assurance and quality control are different processes, but because of their strong interdependence, it becomes difficult to pin point the differences between the two.

In fact, there is a very thin line that separates the two functions.

There are very few organizations in the world that establish these departments separately otherwise mostly one department performs the functions of both.

Hope this precise information helps you to understand the difference between quality assurance vs quality control departments.