Quality Assurance and Quality Control
The terms “quality assurance” and “quality control” are often used interchangeably to refer to ways of ensuring the quality of a service or product. The terms, however, have different meanings.
- Assurance: The act of giving confidence, the state of being certain or the act of making certain.
Quality Assurance: The planned and systematic activities implemented in a quality system so that quality requirements for a product or service will be fulfilled. - Control: An evaluation to indicate needed corrective responses; the act of guiding a process in which variability is attributable to a constant system of chance causes.
Quality Control: The observation techniques and activities used to fulfill requirements for quality.