What Is Quality - Case Study Example

What is Quality? Before going into the details of quality control, quality assurance, and their differences, let’s get a better understanding of whatquality actually is. Quality means to provide product satisfaction to the customers. Any organization or a company can satisfy the stakeholders and the customers only if it provides them with quality in the products that they use. Quality is the key to organizational success as it leads the organization towards market domination through delivering quality products and services to the public. Pearce (2007) states that for a business to be really effective a quality approach must cover all people and all activities at every interface within the business. Quality also means to seek continuous improvement in the products and services provided by any organization. It also means finding out those specific areas which need to be changed or improved in order to make sure that the organization meets the needs and demands of the customers. Importance of Quality Management Importance of quality management in any organization or a company can never be denied. Improving and maintaining quality of products and services is a very important point of consideration for any organization to get success in a competitive market. Quality management is an ongoing process of building and sustaining relationships between the company and its customers by providing the customers with quality products. Kantner (2000) found that target of growth of business and gaining trust of customers in the competitive market can be achieved if we implement a proper quality management system in a company. Any organization or a company may encounter a big problem of loosing its precious and potential customers because of not paying enough attention towards the implementation of proper quality management system. It is a common fact that when a company or any specific business will not have proper implementation of any quality management system, it will surely make a worse impact not only on the growth and development of the company but also on retention of the customers of the company. If a company wants to achieve market domination, the management of that company needs to provide its customers with quality in the products that it delivers. Chung (1999) found that quality, in any business or company, can only be attained when the workers of that specific company will be motivated to improve the standard of the products. Quality Control If we talk about quality control, we can say that quality control is a process which is employed in order to ensure a required level of excellence, superiority and quality in a product or service delivered by a company. Jacowski (2010) states that quality control is a process within an organization designed to ensure a set level of quality for the products or services offered by a company. In the engineering domain, quality control results in accepting or rejecting a manufactured product (Unhelkar, 2003, p.303). The process of quality control includes certain actions which are necessary for the control and verification of required characteristics of any product or services provided by a company. The main purpose of quality control is to ensure that the products and services meet the needs and demands of the customers because when the customers become satisfied with the quality of a product, it results in attracting other valuable customers to the company which is really beneficial in order to achieve market domination in a competitive market. Quality control process involves the examination and verification of products and services for ensuring the required minimum levels of quality in the products. If a problem is found in any product, quality control department stops the production of that specific product temporarily in order to make required changes in the product to ensure that it effectively meets the customers’ demands. It is not the job of quality control professionals to make the changes in a product, rather their job is to examine and identify the problems in any product. It is the job of technical staff of the quality control department to make the required changes identified by the quality controllers. Quality control department values the customers and their requirements while developing any product. Price (2003) states that the clients involvement in quality control is critical. Quality control department is not just concerned with the quality of the products and services; it is also the duty of quality control department to ensure the quality of employees of the company which include various correctable issues regarding employees. Quality Assurance While talking about quality and quality control, another important issue is quality assurance which is deeply involved in the success of any company or organization. Quality assurance is a process in which products and services provided by a company are verified in order to know whether those products and services meet customers’ expectations or not. All aspects of a product are examined and tested, and if it is found that some part or whole of a product does not meet the minimum quality standards properly, appropriate steps are taken by the quality assurance department to improve the quality of the product. Vinet (2010) states that QA contains all things from production planning to product completion, maintenance, repairing and discard. Quality assurance is a process-driven approach which includes some specific steps required to define and attain organizational goals. If we talk about the most popular and effective way to determine quality assurance, we can say that it is Shewhart Cycle. Shewhart Cycle includes four key steps which are required to achieve quality assurance. These four steps include Plan, Do, Check, and Act. In the first step, objectives and processes are established which are required to deliver the required results. The next step involves implementation of the established objectives and processes. Then the implemented processes are monitored and evaluated. This is done by testing the results of the product against the predetermined objectives regarding the product. In the last step, essential actions are taken by the quality assurance team if the results from the third step require some changes and improvements. It is a very effective and useful method for achieving quality assurance because it not only analyzes existing methods used to achieve quality assurance but also helps in improving the quality of products and services of a company. The basic goal is to ensure that excellence and brilliance is intrinsic in every process of the product development. It also helps in determining the importance of accurate and appropriate actions regarding product development and delivery. Difference between Quality Control and Quality Assurance If we talk about the differences between quality control and quantity assurance, we can say that it is really confusing because both of them are closely related to each other. Many companies and organizations are also puzzled and confused about this issue. Both of the concepts are of extreme importance regarding the task of attaining market domination through improved quality of products and services. It is still very important to understand the basic differences between the two. Quality control involves such activities that are designed to assess and evaluate a manufactured product. Whereas quality assurance involves such activities that are designed in order to ensure whether the development and maintenance processes are adequate and appropriate for the development of a quality product or not. The activities related to quality control focus on evaluating and finding defects in a product. For example, quality control department tests whether the defined requirements for the quality of a product are the right requirements or not. Whereas the activities related to quality assurance focus on accuracy and precision of the processes involved in the product development and maintenance. Examples of quality assurance are standards development and methodology regarding development of a product. Quality assurance department tests whether requirements of a process are defined at a detailed level or not. Quality control activities include routine testing of known samples in order to establish consistency, accuracy, and exactitude of product development processes. Both quality control and quality assurance are extremely important in carrying out accurate and consistent process testing. Quality assurance activities include improving the consistency, accuracy, and reliability of the processes established by the quality control department. The three major steps of quality assurance include pre-analytical, analytical, and post-analytical steps which provide great help in identifying and evaluating existing processes of product development and making desired changes and improvements in the product development processes. Quality control is known as a technical function which includes various scientific precautions like duplications and calibrations. These duplications and calibrations are used to obtain information about adequate and required quality of any specific product. Whereas quality assurance is known as an oversight function which deals with management control system for the purpose of scheduling, implementing, and reviewing information to be used in decision making. Quality control involves activities regarding evaluation of a developed work product while quality assurance involves activities which are designed to ensure whether the product development process is appropriate or it needs some changes. One of the basic differences between quality control and quality assurance is that quality control is product oriented as it is related to the basic requirements of the product while quality assurance is process oriented as it is related to the adequacy and improvement in the product development processes. Quality control means to implement the processes developed by the team of professionals while quality assurance means to develop and organize the most suitable quality processes. Quality control ensures whether the results of the product development process are what were expected or they deviate from the expected results while quality assurance ensures whether right processes are chosen for the product development or the processes need to be changed or improved. Quality control emphasizes on product’s defects reduction before it reaches final production stages because if the product is not checked for defects at initial stages, it will cost severely to the company as the consumer may reject it due to poor quality and defects. So it is very necessary for the quality control department to check the product for defects at each and every stage of product development process because it helps in building customer relationship, company’s image, and reputation of the product. Quality control is that system which measures the performance of a process against a prescribed set of standards. The activities included in quality control process are calibrations and analysis of samples in order to asses and evaluate the precision which is associated with sample results. We can take an example of a product with which there are recurrent problems regarding its quality. The department of quality control provides feedback regarding the problem in the product to the quality assurance department. When the quality assurance department receives the feedback, it identifies the causes of the problem and makes appropriate changes in order to improve the quality of the product through eradicating the problem. The quality assurance department sets the standards and guidelines which are followed by the quality control department in order to check whether the product meets the quality requirements or it is falling short of quality. Let’s take another example in which a project manager asks the sponsor to endorse or approve the report regarding business requirements. Now the role of the sponsor is to validate the completeness of the business requirement. Here, if the sponsor actually reviews the report of the business requirements, it will mean that the sponsor is performing a quality control activity because the actions of the sponsor will be based on authenticating the deliverable. Whereas the quality assurance department focuses on the process used to create that deliverable. Talking about differences, some other differences between quality control and quality assurance are: Quality control is actual software testing while quality assurance is implementing suitable processes to develop the software. Quality control focuses testing and detecting defects in the product while quality assurance focuses providing quality through preventing the detected defects. Quality control deals with the system development life cycle of the product while quality assurance deals with entire life cycle of the product. Quality control means by checking the final product at each and every stage of development while quality assurance conducts process reviews to ensure that the final product is a quality product. References Chung, H. (1999). Understanding quality assurance in construction: A practical guide to ISO 9000. London: E & FN Spon. Jacowski, T. (2010). Is Quality Control Important For Your Business?. Retrieved March 21, 2010, from http://ezinearticles.com/?Is-­Quality-­Control-­Important-­For-­Your-­Business?&id=3538290 Kantner, R. (2000). The ISO 9000 answer book (2nd ed.). Canada: John Wiley & Sons. Pearce, B. (2007). Total Quality Management (tqm). Retrieved March 21, 2010, from http://www.articlesbase.com/small-business-articles/total-quality-management-tqm-175038.html Price, J. (2003). Quality Control: The Importance of Website Testing. Retrieved March 21, 2010, from http://www.experiencethread.com/articles/intel_artcl.cfm?article=45 Unhelkar, B. (2003). Process Quality Assurance for UML-Based Projects. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc. Vinet, N. (2010). Quality Assurance Principles. Retrieved March 21, 2010, from http://ezinearticles.com/?Quality-­Assurance-­Principles&id=3647333 Read More