QUALITY SYSTEM | QA_QC | EN

 

Quality Assurance.

Quality assurance can be defined as "part of quality management focused on providing confidence that quality requirements will be fulfilled." 

The confidence provided by quality assurance is twofold—internally to management and externally to customers, government agencies, regulators, certifiers, and third parties. 

An alternate definition is "all the planned and systematic activities implemented within the quality system that can be demonstrated to provide confidence that a product or service will fulfill requirements for quality."

Quality Control.

Quality control can be defined as "part of quality management focused on fulfilling quality requirements." 

While quality assurance relates to how a process is performed or how a product is made, quality control is more the inspection aspect of quality management. 

An alternate definition is "the operational techniques and activities used to fulfill requirements for quality."

Quality has been defined as fitness for use, conformance to requirements, and the pursuit of excellence. Even though the concept of quality has existed from early times, the study and definition of quality have been given prominence only in the last century.

1920s: Quality Control.

Following the Industrial Revolution and the rise of mass production, it became important to better define and control the quality of products. Originally, the goal of quality was to ensure that engineering requirements were met in final products. Later, as manufacturing processes became more complex, quality developed into a discipline for controlling process variation as a means of producing quality products.

1950s: Quality Assurance and Auditing.

The quality profession expanded to include the quality assurance and quality audit functions. The drivers of independent verification of quality were primarily industries in which public health and safety were paramount.