Quality Assurance and Quality Control | Difference and Meaning

Quality Assurance and Quality Control activities are part of a Quality System or Quality Management System. QA includes QC.

QA contains all those planned and systematic actions necessary to provide adequate confidence that a product or service will satisfy/fulfill given requirements for Quality.

Quality Control is a set of activities for ensuring quality in the Products.

QA vs QC | Quality Assurance and Quality Control

See Differences : Quality Assurance Vs Quality Control

	Quality Assurance	Quality Control
Definitions	Quality Assurance is a set of activities for ensuring Quality in the Processes by which products are developed.	Quality Control is a set of activities for ensuring quality in the Products. The activities focus on identifying defects within the actual products produced.
Goal	Quality Assurance’s goal is to improve development and test processes so that defects do not arise when the product is being developed.	Quality Control’s goal is to identify defects after a product is developed and before it’s released.
Focus on	QA’s goal is to prevent defects with a focus on the processes used to make the product. Therefore, it is a Proactive quality process.	QC’s goal is to identify and correct defects in the final product. Therefore, it is a Reactive process.
How	To build a good quality management system and the assessment of its adequacy. Periodic conformance audits [System, Process, and Product audit] of the operations of the system.	Finding and eliminating sources of quality defects/issues through tools and equipments to meet the customer’s requirements.
What	Prevention of quality problems through planned and systematic activities including documentation [SOPs, FMEA, CP, and WIs, etc.]	The activities or techniques used to achieve and maintain the product quality, process, and service.
As a Tools	QA is a managerial tool	QC is a corrective tool
Responsibility	Everyone on the team i.e. all functions/departments are involved in developing the product is responsible for QA.	QC is usually the responsibility of a specific quality control team that tests the product for defects.
Statistical Techniques	Statistical tools and techniques can be applied in both QA and QC. When they are applied to processes [process inputs and operational parameters i.e. CTQs and CTPs], they are called Statistical Process Control-SPC and it becomes the part of QA.	When statistical tools and techniques applied to finished product [process output], they are called Statistical Quality Control-SQC and comes under QC
Orientation	Quality Assurance is Process-oriented	Quality Control is Product-oriented
Example	Verification/Audit is an example of QA	Validation/Software Testing is an example of QC