Quality Control in Manufacturing – An Introduction

Quality control is the process of fulfilling and checking the conformance to quality standards. There are many different approaches to quality control, but an important part of every one of these is regular inspection of the goods. Besides dedicated QMS software, some ERP/MRP systems offer the required functionality to small businesses.

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Table of Contents

What is Quality Control?

Quality control (QC) is the process of fulfilling quality standards, checking the products’ conformance to them, and improving product quality as a consequence. As such, it is a vital part of materials management. Much of a company’s quality control activity is made up of inspections where physical products are visually examined in order to detect inconsistencies.

These inspections may include batch inspection, product sampling, laboratory testing, etc.

Although the employees that inspect the products are directly responsible for the quality of the goods, proper quality control is not only confined to inspections. Quality control approaches such as ISO 9001 also put a strong emphasis on areas that support quality management such as process management, competence building, organizational culture, etc.

Quality Control vs. Quality Assurance

While quality control deals with fulfilling quality requirements and checking the conformance of the goods, quality assurance (QA) is tasked with creating the conditions for fulfilling the quality requirements. Quality control is therefore focused on the product while quality assurance is process-oriented.

For example, quality assurance activities include process documentation, auditing, supplier management, personnel training, production engineering, etc.

That means quality assurance is rather proactive and aims to create a system that would manufacture high-quality products while quality control is tasked with checking if that has been achieved.

Benefits of Quality Control

There are many benefits to having quality control procedures in place, with the most obvious advantage being improved quality in the workplace. Some of the additional benefits gained with QC are:

Quality Control methods and methodologies

There are many different quality control methodologies that have found widespread use in both large and small businesses. Ranging from simple inspections to using statistical to