Quality Control vs.

Quality Assurance

 Quality control is a process by which entities review the quality of all factors involved in production.

 Quality control emphasizes testing of products to uncover defects, and reporting to management who make the decision to allow or deny the release, Quality assurance attempts to improve and stabilize production, and associated processes, to avoid, or at least minimize, issues that led to the defects in the first place

Approach
Quality guarantee or assurance is based on process approach. Quality monitoring and its assurance ensure that the processes and systems are developed and adhered in such a way that the deliverables are of good quality. This process is meant to produce defect-free goods or services which means being right the first time with no or minimum rework.

 Quality control is product-based approach. It checks whether the deliverables satisfy the quality requirements as well as the specifications of the customers or not. Depending upon the results, suitable corrective action is taken by quality control personals.

Sequence
One of the major points of quality control vs. QA is that assurance of quality is done before starting a project whereas the quality control begins once the product has been manufactured. During assurance of quality or monitoring process, the requirements of the customers are defined. Based on those requirements, the processes and systems are established and documented. All this is done to ensure that the requirements of the customers are met stringently.

 After manufacturing the product, the quality control process begins. Based on the customer requirements and standards developed during the quality guarantee process, the quality control personal check whether the manufactured product meets all those requirements or not. So, assurance of quality is a proactive or preventive process to avoid defects whereas quality control is a corrective process to identify the defects in order to correct them.

Activities
Most activities falling under the purview of quality guarantee or its assurance are performed by managers, customers, and third party auditors. These activities include process documentation, establishing standards, developing checklists, conducting internal audits, conducting external audits, failure mode effect analysis and training. Engineers, inspectors, and supervisors on the shop floor perform quality control activities. Their activities include performing and receiving inspection, final inspection, in-process inspection etc.

Interdependence
Both, quality control and assurance of quality are largely interdependent. The quality guarantee department relies mostly on the feedback provided by the quality control department. For example, if there are recurrent problem with the quality of the products, then the quality control department provides feedback to the quality monitoring and assurance personnel that there is a problem in the process or system that is causing product quality problems.

 Then the assurance of quality department determines the root cause of the problem and then brings changes to the process to ensure that there are no quality issues in future. Similarly, the quality control department follows the guidelines and standards established by assurance of quality department to check whether deliverables meet the quality requirements or not.

 Hence, both these departments are essential to maintain good quality of the deliverables.

 Although both quality control and quality guarantee are different processes, but because of their strong interdependence, it becomes difficult to pin point the differences between the two. In fact, there is a very thin line that separates the two functions. Moreover in some organizations, one department performs the functions of both. All this leads to confusion between quality control vs quality assurance .