The success of any business is judged by the
factors like high level of sales, profits, strong reputation, consumer
satisfaction and of course the production of high quality products. Quality is
an integral and vital component in all product based businesses, and managing
the quality of the product is an essential factor for the survival and
successful growth of an organization / business.
Quality assurance is a process centered approach to ensure whether a company
or organization is offering the best possible products or services to
the customers. In other words, it is the process of determining whether
products meet customers expectations. Quality assurance has a wide ranging
concept covering all matters that individually or collectively influence
the quality of a product. The terms 'Quality Assurance (QA)' and 'Quality
Control (QC)' are often used interchangeably to refer to ways of ensuring
the quality of a service or product. Both the terms are intended to ensure
that the data collected are adequate to fulfill project objectives; but
they have different meanings. Quality Assurance is the planned and systematic
activities implemented in a quality system so that quality requirements
for a product or service will be fulfilled. It is all about coming up
with the processes and systems used to insure that a product meets company
standards. Whereas Quality control deals with the actual testing of a
product to make sure it works. It is the observation techniques and activities
used to fulfill requirements for quality.
Quality Assurance Management can be defined as
the management of all quality related project activities such as definition,
planning, execution and control. A career in Quality Assurance Management
involves management of the quality of raw materials, assemblies,
products and components; services related to production and management,
production and inspection processes. The chief principles of quality assurance
management are fulfillment of adequate technical needs, quality of suppliers,
check the product for its quality, performance, safety, and reliability
standards, proper usage of materials, surety of product's technicality,
reliability, maintainability and performance requirements.
Quality Assurance is usually performed by a
group of people and has many different levels of testing, from
testing the minute tiny pieces of code, to the gigantic, testing of final products. A Quality
Assurance Specialist, also known as quality monitoring manager or a project
manager works with all stages of a project or product. He/ she monitor the
standards and methods by which products are produced, whether food, textiles, clothing, vehicles, video games, MP3 player, toys or other
manufactured items. It is the responsibility of the quality assurance personnel
for developing and implementing quality management products. The quality
assurance manager should ensure that all products manufactured or marketed by a
company are free from any fault or errors, whether it is new or evolved, is
produced and offered with the best possible materials, in the most comprehensive
way and with highest quality. The services of these professionals go a long way
in making industries more productive and profitable.
