By the end of the Second World War, mass production of various kinds of products was at its peak. Manufacturing companies have begun to produce different kinds of products that are then sold to the public in large quantities. As a result, there had been also an increase in the number of defective products that were sold in the market. To minimize this, a shift was done within business organizations in order to give more importance to the quality of the products that are manufactured and sold. Even today, business organizations, regardless of their size, give importance to the quality of the products and services that they provide their customers above everything else.
More often than not, the terms ‘quality assurance’ and ‘quality control’ have been interchanged. But actually, these refer to two different concepts. Quality control focuses more on failure detection. It comprises various methods, systems and strategies in order to determine certain areas which are below the expectations and standards of the company to its products and services. Quality control aims to answer the question ‘what went wrong?’ and ‘what can be done to remedy it?’
On the other hand, quality assurance pertains to the processes and procedures which aim to foresee any potential failure that may occur in order to prevent this from happening even before it happens. Quality assurance procedures and methodologies are often provided during the planning stage and conceptualization stage of a particular product or service in order to determine its feasibility and profitability. Quality assurance encompasses all the potential threats towards the product and service that may arise in the future, particularly when it comes to product safety, legal matters and the like. Quality control is a part of quality assurance in the sense that they determine what the potential problems that can happen, and how these problems may be properly address to minimize its impact to the business organization as a whole.
Between the two, business organizations tend to focus more on quality assurance as opposed to quality control. This is in order to prevent any loss of income that can be incurred by the business organization and the increase in the expenses that will be generated as a result of remedying the problems that arose as a result of launching a particular product or service. It is for this reason why business organizations take some time before they launch a new product or add a new service feature to their current list of products and services.