Quality Assurance

Quality assurance (QA) allows manufacturers to maintain consistency and produce quality components and products that clients can trust. QA is essential to ensure products meet quality requirements with no defects by planning and executing quality control tasks throughout the manufacturing process and proactively addressing quality concerns during development and production.

Quality assurance establishes best practices to prevent defects and mistakes during manufacturing. It provides defined processes, protocols, and procedures that include inspection, testing, and monitoring production tasks to ensure accurate performance. QA differs from quality control (QC), which is reactive and focused on walkthroughs, testing, and checkpoint reviews. QA is proactive, emphasizing education, tool selection, team training, and process improvement. In many facilities, QA can also include auditing functions.