Tipskey - Misconception Of Quality Assurance

Posted: 2007-11-28

Misconception Of Quality Assurance

Even some huge western multinational companies are not clear about the role of quality assurance (QA). Many think that quality assurance is the same with quality control (QC). In fact QC is a business process, just like sales and production. In meeting customer's expectation, QC is merely in charge of the product quality but QA is to answer for process quality involving product quality, on time delivery, design requirement etc. A QC person may stay idle after they have done all the product checking but a QA will not have idle time at all because there is always something to improve.

QA is not a business process. QA oversees all business processes from supplier's quality to customer's enquiry and from product realization further to after sales service. If QA is called to handle routine operation work for a business process, then
a) there is a conflict of interest as QA can map the business process in his favor.
b) QA's ability in QA will be under utilized.
c) QA cannot be away doing audit, benchmarking, training etc. Operational work requires a person to be available all the time or else the operation will be affected. If a type of work makes QA unable to be away even for a few days or else operation will have problem, then that work is definitely not QA's.

Some unrelated things that QA is often called to do:
1) occupational safety (safety officer)
2) selling manufacturing scraps (production supervisor)
3) buying office accessories (secretary)
4) producing, signing, scanning and keeping testing / product certificate (quality control, clerk)
5) product costing (sales admin)
6) environmental work (environmental officer)
7) report business performance to HQ (finance executive)
8) prepare marketing material
9) register customer complaints and tell customer that the company has received the complaint. Coordinate to solve the complaint. Complaint follow-up should be done by after sales service department instead. Every company must have a after sales service department.

In the aspect of customer complaint, QA's long-term goal is to ensure the staffing of after sales service department is minimum by minimizing customer complaints. It is good that QA is made aware about customer complaint. That can be achieved by letting QA create an overview complaint list and do analysis on the customer complaints (categorizing, root cause investigation). QA may take the ownership at the initial stage of a complaint. Once
a) it is clear that who will follow up complaint and
b) the root cause has been identified,
then QA passes the ownership to the identified person to follow up and close the complaint.

The consequence of the above distraction is QA cannot improve processes and the manufacturing still suffers loss. And QA is generally seen as not keeping the responsibility. Although his direct superior likes him because he solves most of the superior's urgent problems but when the blame has come, even the superior cannot help it because it is a visible fact that processes have not improved. Or actually the superior is asked to leave too because of no manufacturing improvement. QA person should request to change his title if he is called to do non-QA work. If the boss wants QA person to do non-QA work because of being afraid that QA may be doing nothing to improve operation, then the boss should not be hiring a QA person anyway.

QA should not report under any business process, for example production. QA should report under the person who oversees all business processes. In fact, QA should assist the person in charge in the company to set the departmental roles for all business processes.

QA is to install order and logic, plus to minimize grey area and bridges of communication (less bridges less communication problem) in all daily operations. Staff turnoever should have minimum impact on the system. The target of QA is actually to improve the processes until QA people are not needed anymore. The target for QA is usually qualitative than quantitative. QA leads the team towards meeting customer's expectation. QA work is system-oriented. When the system is correct, then it can easily be certified with ISO 9001. Some QA tasks:
a) Be in charge in anything related to ISO 9001 and six sigma.
b) Draw flowcharts for all business processes and maintain them.
c) Lead in KPI collection.

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