Quality control is a business procedure used to assess the quality of a company's products or services against benchmarks determined by the company, industry standards, or clients/customers. Quality control includes inspecting a product before it enters the marketplace to make sure it is defect-free.
Quality Checking
A U.S. Navy Aviation Electrician's Mate performs a maintenance check during the course of his duties.
Quality Control (QC) and Quality Assurance (QA)
Quality control and quality assurance have different purposes. Quality control emphasizes product testing to discover defects and report them to management, which decides how to respond (by delaying the product release date, for example). Quality assurance attempts to improve and stabilize production to prevent defects. In this way, QA is preventive and process-oriented while QC is reactive and product-oriented.
Guidelines for Quality Control
To maintain an effective quality control program, a business must follow these important guidelines:
- Decide on a specific standard for the product or service.
- Determine the extent of quality service actions.
- Collect real-world data to improve product quality and adjust the QC process.
- Submit the result to management. If the percentage of defective products is too high, management should take corrective action to improve quality.
- Most importantly, a quality control process should be an ongoing process.
Three Major Aspects of Quality Control
- Elements, like controls, job management, defined and well-managed processes, performance and integrity criteria, and identification of records.
- Competence, such as knowledge, skills, experience, and qualifications.
- Soft elements, such as personnel integrity, confidence, organizational culture, motivation, team spirit, and quality relationships. Deficiency in any of these three aspects increases the risk of inferior products or services getting to market. Quality control is one of the most important procedures for any business because it lowers that risk of customer or client dissatisfaction and prevents losses for the business.