QUALITY ASSURANCE AND CONTROL

• Quality assurance can be defined as "part of quality management focused on providing confidence that quality requirements will be fulfilled."
• The confidence provided by quality assurance is twofold—internally to management and externally to customers, government agencies, regulators, certifiers, and third parties.
• QUALITY ASSURANCE - An alternate definition is "all the planned and systematic activities implemented within the quality system that can be demonstrated to provide confidence that a product or service will fulfill requirements for quality."
• Quality control can be defined as "part of quality management focused on fulfilling quality requirements."
• Quality Assurance relates to how a process is performed or how a product is made.
• Quality control is more the inspection aspect of quality management. An alternate definition is "the operational techniques and activities used to fulfill requirements for quality."
• Quality - Standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind, the degree of excellence of something.
• Total Quality Management (TQM) - a comprehensive, organization-wide effort to improve the quality of products and services, applicable to all organizations
• Customer - Anyone who is impacted by the product or process delivered by an organization.
• External customer - The end user as well as intermediate processors. Other may not be purchasers but may have some connection with the product.
• Internal customer - Other divisions of the company that receive the processed product
• Product - The output of the process carried out by the organization. It may be goods(e.g., automobiles, computer), software (e.g., a computer code, a report) or service (e.g., banking, insurance)
• Customer satisfaction achieved in two dimensions: Product features and Freedom from deficiencies
• Product features – Refers to quality of design. Examples in manufacturing industry: Performance, Reliability, Durability, Ease of use, Esthetics etc. Examples in service industry: Accuracy, Timeliness, Friendliness and courtesy, Knowledge of server etc.
• Freedom from deficiencies – Refers to quality of conformance. Higher conformance means fewer complaints and increased customer satisfaction. (This is related to free from defects.)
• Competition – Today’s market demand high quality products at lowcost. Having `high quality’ reputation is not enough! Internal cost of maintaining the reputation should be less.
• Changing customer – The new customer is not only commanding priority based on volume but is more demanding about the “quality system.
• Changing product mix – The shift from low volume, high price to high-volume, low price has resulted in a need to reduce the internal cost of poor quality.
• Product complexity – As systems have become more complex, the reliability requirements for suppliers of components have become more stringent.
• Higher levels of customer satisfaction – Higher customers’ expectations are getting spawned by increasing competition.
• Quality Perspective includes Perfection, Consistency, Eliminating waste, Speed of delivery, Compliance with policies and procedures, Doing it right the first time, Delighting or pleasing customers, Total customer satisfaction and service.
• Quality levels - At organizational level, we need to ask following questions: • Which products and services meet your expectations? • Which products and services you need that you are not currently receiving? - At process level, we need to ask: • What products and services are most important to the external customer? • What processes produce those products and services? • What are the key inputs to those processes?
• Technical quality—the core element of the good or service.
• Functional quality—customer perception of how the good functions or the service is delivered.
• Customers’ prior expectations (generalized and specific service experiences)
• Customers prior perception of service performance affect their satisfaction with a service. Satisfaction = (Perception of Performance) –(Expectation)