One of the most significant thumb rules of conducting business is to ensure that your customers are satisfied with the overall appeal of the products at all points of time. Herein lies the genesis of the concept of “Quality Management.”
Eventually, companies expanded the horizons of quality management to include quality assurance and quality control to produce products that conform to a certain standard and remain in business by providing quality products to the people.
Key Takeaways
- Quality Control is focused on identifying and fixing defects in the product or service, while Quality Assurance is focused on preventing defects from occurring in the first place.
- Quality Control is a reactive process, while Quality Assurance is a proactive process.
- Inspectors or testers carry out Quality Control, while Quality Assurance involves everyone in the organization.
Quality Control vs Quality Assurance
Quality Control (QC) is a set of activities designed to ensure that products or services meet specified quality standards. QC is focused on detecting and correcting defects or errors in the final product. Quality Assurance (QA) is a set of activities designed to ensure that quality standards and processes are being followed throughout the entire product or service lifecycle.
Quality control is the phase during which companies focus on recognizing any faults in their products and fixing them efficiently.
The primary role of quality control is to ensure the company at once checks for all the possible faults in their products and sells them to people only after making suitable alterations to them.
Quality assurance is the phase during which companies focus on assuring that the desired quality of their products is reached.
The primary role of quality assurance is to ensure that the product or service that is being provided to the people does not suffer from any loophole and conforms to the desired standards.
Comparison Table
| Parameters of Comparison | Quality Control | Quality Assurance |
|---|---|---|
| Meaning | It is the phase during which the companies check and remedy all the loopholes in their products. | It is the phase during which the companies aim to get the desired standards. |
| Role | To check and efficaciously remedy the malfunctions that plague the product. | To reach the desired quality in the products by eliminating faults. |
| Genesis | In the 1920s | In the 1950s |
| Time of Performace | Quality control is performed after making the product. | Quality Assurance is performed at an early stage to ensure that there aren’t any loopholes in the product that is being produced. |
| Responsibility | A different set of people are responsible for conducting tests on the finished product to check for faults. | A group is in charge of developing the product, and the same group is responsible for checking faults. |
What is Quality Control?
Quality control is the phase through which companies check for faults that their finished product suffers from and rectifies such malfunctions immediately to ensure that the penultimate product conforms to the company’s standards.
Quality control guarantees us that the product we purchase is free from all faults, thereby reposing our faith in the product and the company.
The main role of quality control is to ensure that any fault that there is in the end product is rectified immediately so that the product that is sold to the purchasers is free of all loopholes. There is a different set of people responsible for conducting tests on the finished product to check for faults.
Quality control is reactive as it is performed after the product is produced to check if there are any issues with it. It is preceded by the phase of quality assurance.
When it comes to software, a computer program has to be performed to check if there are any complications in the end product.
It takes a long time to run the program and check for faults, but it is imperative to perform it nonetheless as it helps in seeing the faults that were there in the product even after the quality assurance.
What is Quality Assurance?
Quality assurance is the phase during which the company tries to reach its standard while developing a product. Every company has a certain standard that they need to conform to in order to ensure that people continue buying their products because it guarantees them good quality.
This concept is fairly recent and was produced keeping in mind the welfare of people at large.
The main role of quality assurance is to ensure that while the products are being produced, they conform to the desired standards of quality. It is very different from quality control as this is performed while the product is still being produced.
Quality assurance uses a preventive method as it tries to eliminate malfunctions while developing the product. Every product is produced by a team that is also responsible for checking if any alterations are to be made to the product.
Quality assurance precedes quality control as the primary aim is to eliminate malfunctions. There is a group in charge of developing the product, and the same group is responsible for checking faults.
When it comes to software, there is no need to perform a computer program at this stage to check for loopholes.
Main Differences Between Quality Control and Quality Assurance
- While quality control aims at recognizing and fixing the faults that the finished product suffers from, quality assurance aims at conforming to their standards of producing quality products
- The method involved in quality control focuses more on rectifying the faults that the end product has. On the other hand, quality assurance employs the method by which all the products that are products are free of problems.
- Quality control is a concept that has its roots in the Industrial Revolution, whereas quality assurance is a newer concept that surfaced years after quality control and gave more importance to people’s welfare whilst using the product.
- In the case of software, quality control involves running a computer program to check for faults, whereas no programs have to be run during quality assurance.
- Quality control checks for faults that went unnoticed during quality assurance. On the other hand, quality assurance is the first stage of checking for faults while developing the product.
- https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/gepi.20516
- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3141/1813-31
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