Quality Assurance (QA) vs Quality Control (QC)

1) Quality Assurance

 - Quality Assurance is Process oriented and focuses on prevention of defect.

 - Quality Assurance is a set of activities for ensuring quality in the manufacturing processes by which products are developed.

Focus

 - Quality Assurance aims to prevent defects in the process.

 - It is proactive quality process.

 - It identifies weakness in processes to improve them.

Goal

 - The goal of Quality Assurance is to improve development stage and test processes so that defects do not arise when the product is being developed.

To Achieve QA Goals

 - Prevention of quality problem through planned and systematic activities including documentation.

 - Periodic conformance audits of the system.

 - Established a good quality management system in organization.

Examples

 - QA Audit

 - Process Documentation

 - Developing Checklists

 - Conducting internal audits

 - Establishing standards

Responsibility

 - Every team member involved in developing the product is responsible for Quality Assurance.

2) Quality Control

 - Quality Control is product oriented and focuses on identification of defects.

 - Quality Control is a set of activities for ensuring quality in products and focus on identifying defects in the actual products produced.

Focus

 - Quality Control aims to identify and correct defects in the finished product before it's released.

 - It is a reactive process.

Goal

 - The goal of Quality Control is to identify defects after a product is developed and before dispatch.

To Achieve QC Goals

 - Finding and eliminating sources of quality problems through tools and equipment's so that customer's requirements are continually met.

 - The activities used to achieve and maintain the product quality, process and service.

Examples

 - QC Review

 - Performing testing

 - Performing inspections

Responsibility

 - Quality Control is usually the responsibility of a team members that tests the product for defects.


QA and QC working together. QC detected a problem with the quality of the products. QC provided feedback to QA person that there is a problem in the process or system that is causing product quality problems. QA determines the root cause of the problem and then brings changes to the process to ensure that there are no quality issue in future.