QC, QA or QMS – Which Should I Use?

Is your company still using the term QC for your quality function??Are you a quality oriented organisation??You may be surprised, but as a quality professional I find the term QC severely lacking.?Any organisation that uses the term Quality Control to me is stuck in the Mid 20th century.?Are you willing to produce unnecessary scrap to be somewhat certain that ‘Most’ of your product is compliant with the customer requirements??If so, QC is for your company.?At best, with enough personnel to inspect each and every product made you can be certain that 85% of your product is good.?Your production will still produce defects and scrap, but your inspection staff should catch most of it before it leaves your building.?Yet, how much does that matter for your customer??For the end user??They still receive defects, sure it is a small percentage, but each produced defect has an impact on the perception of the end user about Your Company.

Next on the ladder of quality success is Quality Assurance, Well Assurance sounds so much better than Control doesn’t it??Welcome to the 1980’s.?In QA you have established a system that will aid design in creating a process that will quickly identify defects in the manufacture of the product and reduce the amount of defective material you produce.?Thus your organisation will manufacture less defective material, reject less material before it leaves the door, and ultimately end up with very few defective items reaching your end user.?The entire company needs to be involved in QA, it is no longer the duty of a few individuals to check the product.?Each department must become involved, from contract acceptance right through to shipping, each process must be reviewed, checked, audited, and Improved.?That last one is the key, Improvement.?There is no point in identifying an issue only to then not spend the time to adjust it and remove that issue, whether it is the fact that the shipper needs a better place to put his tape gun so he can seal the shipping box, or the fact that the 300 tonne punch press is 1/8” out of alignment with the line and produces crooked parts. QA is more expensive than QC in the short term, but your reputation and quality will grow with every perfect product you manufacture.

Lastly we have the revered QMS.?ISO 9000 / AS 9100 / QMS 16949, these are the Holy Grail of quality.?You design your system for the entire company to focus on quality.?A monster has been born, these systems are expensive to design, to audit, and to maintain, the designations themselves cost thousands of dollars each year to have a third party audit.?Many companies feel this is the way they need to go to make the best product, personally I disagree.?Establish your QMS, I am all in favour of that, make your system solid and focus on the improvement cycle, establish the discipline.?Set quality up to win, and then maintain your system internally, you don’t need the designation, as long as your system works and your quality department (no matter the size) has the authority to identify and force the changes needed to improve.?Now you have made it to the 21st Century, your company will produce less scrap, have less down time, accept fewer bad contracts, and establish better relationships with suppliers.?Profits will increase as too hopefully will business.

Comparison Quality Assurance Quality Control Definition

QA is a set of activities for ensuring quality in the processes by which products are developed.

QC is a set of activities for ensuring quality in products. The activities focus on identifying defects in the actual products produced.

Focus on

QA aims to prevent defects with a focus on the process used to make the product. It is a proactive quality process.

QC aims to identify (and correct) defects in the finished product. Quality control, therefore, is a reactive process.

Goal

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

The goal of QC is to identify defects after a product is developed and before it's released.

How

Establish a good quality management system and the assessment of its adequacy. Periodic conformance audits of the operations of the system.

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

What

Prevention of quality problems through planned and systematic activities including documentation.

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

Responsibility

Everyone on the team involved in developing the product is responsible for quality assurance.

Quality control is usually the?responsibility?of a specific team that tests the product for defects.

Example

Verification is an example of QA

Validation/Software Testing is an example of QC

Statistical Techniques

Statistical Tools & Techniques can be applied in both QA & QC. When they are applied to processes (process inputs & operational parameters), they are called Statistical Process Control (SPC); & it becomes the part of QA.

When statistical tools & techniques are applied to finished products (process outputs), they are called as Statistical Quality Control (SQC) & comes under QC.

As a tool

QA is a managerial tool

QC is a corrective tool

Orientation

QA is process oriented

QC is product oriented

Definitions of QA and QC

·????????Quality Assurance (QA)?refers to the process used to create the deliverables, and can be performed by a?manager, client, or even a third-party reviewer. Examples of quality assurance include process checklists, project audits and methodology and standards development.

·????????Quality assurance activities are determined before production work begins and these activities are performed while the product is being developed. In?contrast, Quality control activities are performed?after?the product is developed.

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·????????Quality Control (QC)?refers to quality related activities associated with the creation of project deliverables. Quality control is used to verify that deliverables are of acceptable quality and that they are complete and correct. Examples of quality control activities include inspection, deliverable peer reviews and the testing process.

·????????Quality control is about?adherence to requirements. Quality assurance is generic and does not concern the specific requirements of the product being developed.

Approach

Are you seeking a proactive system, or a reactive system??Is your focus on improving the entire system or only production??These are your decisions.?

“We don’t care how much we produce in bad product, it is the cost of doing business” – Welcome to QC Land.?Hire a group of people to check the product going out of your door and accept excess scrap, and production adjustments.

“We want to minimise bad product, and have a solid process for improving our production.” Well you made it to QA Land.?Hire 1 or 2 process oriented people, and a few inspectors to check the product, identify issues and have your process people make system improvements that should eliminate the cause of the defects.

“We want to make the entire company run as well as we can, maximise the potential and have the best product we can make on time.”?Hire a quality manager, hire a few inspectors, design your system to continuously improve and give your quality people the authority to insist on improvements, insist that quality is involved in every aspect of the company to identify areas for improvement and watch efficiency skyrocket.

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