Why Do Customer Complaints Keep Coming? Because You Have Only QC, Not QA!
Why Do Customer Complaints Keep Coming? Because You Have Only QC, Not QA!
Reprinted from https://www.sohu.com/a/791900664_120023886?scm=10001.325_13-109000.0.0.5_32&spm=smpc.channel_248.block3_308_NDdFbm_1_fd.4.1737460446112Ib4oHqx_324
Introduction
Why do you and your quality team work so hard, day and night, yet customer complaints keep coming?
Because your factory has only QC but no QA, or it has QA but its true functions are not fully developed or brought into play.
Part 1
Quality Control
QC: Quality Control, the quality inspection of products, and the collective term for personnel involved in analyzing quality problems, making improvements, and controlling nonconforming products.
It generally includes:
DQC (Design Quality Control);
IQC (Incoming Quality Control);
IPQC (In-Process Quality Control);
FQC (Final Quality Control);
OQC (Out-going Quality Control).
The C in QC, I believe, stands for Control, not Check. Because inspection is one of the many measures that Control can adopt — that is, control includes inspection.
This is also one of the reasons why some enterprises have poor product quality and high quality costs: they position QC as Quality Check, focusing only on product inspection while neglecting the management of the processes that affect product quality.
Part 2
Quality Assurance
QA: Quality Assurance, ensuring that product quality is free of problems by establishing, maintaining, and improving the quality management system.
It generally includes:
QSE (Quality System Engineer);
DQA (Design Quality Assurance), and personnel responsible for the calibration and management of measuring instruments.
JQE (Joint Quality Engineer), i.e., a quality engineer hired by the supplier at its own expense to work for the customer — the eyes and ears of the customer's SQE.
From the definitions, QA focuses on planning, establishing, maintaining, and improving the entire quality management system. QC mainly covers product quality inspection, and also includes control of the people, machines, materials, methods, and environment related to the product.
QA must know not only where the problem lies, but also how to formulate solutions to these problems and how to prevent them in the future. QC needs to know only that when there is a problem, it must be controlled — but it does not necessarily need to know why it should be controlled this way.
To use an imperfect analogy: QC is the police, and QA is the judge. QC only needs to arrest those who break the law; it cannot prevent others from committing crimes or ultimately convict them. The judge, however, formulates laws to prevent crime and hands down rulings in accordance with the law.
What QC focuses on is the product, not the system — this is its main difference from QA. Their purpose is the same as QA's: to "meet or exceed customer requirements."
Part 3
The Difference Between QC and QA
To summarize:
QC: mainly post-event quality inspection activities; it assumes errors are permissible and expects to find and sort out errors.
QA: mainly pre-event quality assurance activities, focused on prevention, expecting to reduce the probability of errors.
QA must know not only where the problem lies, but also how to formulate solutions to these problems and how to prevent them in the future.
QC needs to know how to control a problem, but does not necessarily need to know why it should be controlled this way.
QC refers to the operating techniques and activities adopted to make products meet quality requirements; it includes inspection, correction, and feedback. For example, after QC inspection identifies nonconforming products, it removes them and feeds the nonconformity information back to the relevant departments for improvement measures.
Therefore, QC's scope of control is mainly within the factory. Its purpose is to prevent nonconforming products from being put into production, passed on to the next process, or shipped out, to ensure that products meet quality requirements and that only conforming products are delivered to customers.
QA provides trust to meet customer requirements — that is, to make customers confident that the products you provide can meet their requirements.
Therefore, evidence must be retained at every stage, from market research onward through review of customer requirements, product development, order acceptance and material procurement, incoming inspection, production process control and shipment, and after-sales service, to prove that every activity in the factory is carried out in accordance with customer requirements.
QA's purpose is not to ensure product quality; ensuring product quality is QC's task.
QA mainly provides trustworthy products. Therefore, it is necessary to manage the entire process from understanding customer requirements to after-sales service. This requires the enterprise to establish a quality management system, formulate corresponding documents to standardize the activities of each process, and retain evidence of implementation, so as to provide trust.
This trust can be divided into two types, internal and external:
External — to set customers at ease, so they believe the factory produces and delivers products according to their requirements;
Internal — to set the factory owner at ease, because the owner bears primary responsibility for product quality and must take full responsibility for any quality incident involving the product.
This is also the main requirement of product quality laws in various countries, to prompt enterprises to truly value quality. Therefore, to avoid bearing quality liability, the owner must standardize all activities with documents and retain evidence.
But it is impossible for the owner to understand one by one whether internal personnel operate in accordance with the process document requirements of the quality management system. This requires QA to conduct audits on his behalf, to determine whether the process document requirements are being followed, so that the owner can believe that all activities in the factory are carried out as specified in the documents and feel at ease.
Therefore, the main difference between QC and QA is: the former ensures that product quality meets specifications; the latter plans and establishes the quality management system and ensures that the quality management system operates as required, so as to provide internal and external trust.
Part 4
The Relationship Between QC and QA
At the same time, QC and QA also have something in common: both QC and QA must carry out verification. For example, QC testing products against standards is verifying whether products meet specified requirements; QSE conducting internal audits of the quality management system is verifying whether the quality management system operates in accordance with standard requirements.
Another example: QA conducting product audits and QPA audits is verifying whether products have undergone all specified activities and whether they can meet specified requirements, so as to ensure that all products delivered by the factory are conforming and comply with relevant regulations.
QC refers to the operating techniques and activities adopted to make products meet quality requirements; it includes inspection, correction, and feedback. For example, after QC inspection identifies nonconforming products, it removes them and feeds the nonconformity information back to the relevant departments for improvement measures.
Therefore, QC's scope of control is mainly within the factory. Its purpose is to prevent nonconforming products from being put into production, passed on to the next process, or shipped out, to ensure that products meet quality requirements and that only conforming products are delivered to customers.
The relationship between QA and QC:
QC is the most fundamental link in quality management control and includes all inspection work.
QA includes QC, and its core still lies in controlling quality.
However, it goes beyond the scope of testing and also includes related work such as training, process management, and auditing.
Quality management is a broader scope: it includes not only QA and QC, but also thinking about and managing the quality system.
Why QA and QC Are Needed
When manufacturers sell products, they often claim how good their quality is, so they have a responsibility to ensure that product quality really is as good as they claim. Therefore, QC is needed to inspect the quality of products at every production stage.
However, QC inspection alone is far from enough. Someone must stand at an overall perspective to control all links related to the production of the product.
These links include the quality of raw and auxiliary materials, the quality of factory operations, the quality of equipment and instruments, and the quality of production and inspection. If any link is overlooked, product quality cannot be ensured.
Therefore, the establishment of QA and QC is also meant to satisfy customers and create a "win-win" effect between the enterprise and consumers.