Understanding quality control and quality assurance

When you purchase a product or service you expect a high level of value. Your customers expect this same thing from your organization. Since standards are so high on organizations, it is easy to see why you need to worry about quality control and quality assurance within your organization. Quality is the key to any manufacturing company's success and you need to seek out methods that will be able to help you maintain a higher level of quality. In most cases this means turning to a system like lean manufacturing or Six Sigma to help you improve the organization. Your customers deserve and want nothing short of the best so it is your responsibility to give this to them. Let's look at what quality assurance and quality control mean and how they can help to improve your organization.

Quality Control
Starting with quality control we can see that there are numerous factors used in order to help you produce products and to find a way to ensure that your customers needs are met. With quality control you will worry about the customer's standards and how you can meet them. Not only do you strive to make a product that fits the needs of the customer you must also worry about other things like if you have a dependable product and one that meets the price range of your target audience. If the products do not meet the quality standards that you set, you are failing the company and failing your customers.

Quality Assurance
With quality assurance you also focus on the needs of the customer and making sure that all of the products you send out will be able to meet their expectations. You have several steps that you will follow and you also need to make sure that you are able to set goals and to actually achieve these goals. The PDCA cycle is commonly used with quality assurance. This acronym refers to: Plan, Do, Check, Act. What this means is that you will have a process that you follow that has several steps that must be followed in order to give you the right result. Implementing the program and then following through with it will be able to lead to higher quality products and services.

Understanding both programs
It helps to see what the differences are between the two programs since they are both focused on how to bring about quality to the company. The main thing you will see is known as verification. This is where you are able to see if your product is actually progressing and giving you the right results. With validation you will see that your products are meeting the customer and company standards and giving you the right results. Finding defects and eliminating them before they are passed onto the customers from the product is one of your most important goals.

Both programs are great. One works more on worrying about the customer where the other worries more about improving the actual product. It helps to concentrate on both programs initially and then choosing one that you know will be able to work well for your organization. If a problem arises, check it, evaluate it, and fix it before it will get to the point that it hinders productivity and the company again. You have to be proactive as much as you possibly can to prevent all these issues from happening and causes sluggishness to happen along with giving your company a poor reputation due to faulty products.Listen to customer feedback and really take it seriously as they are your greatest critics and will give you insight into your products that you might not see from within the company.