Your basic guide to quality assurance standards

In a competitive market, it is important to have the best quality products and services. Companies are required to have strict quality assurance standards.

These standards help ensure that your company delivers the best product or service possible while maintaining consistency among its workforce. They showcase a commitment to continuous improvement for the service of their customer base.

Quality Assurance (QA) is an important concept for any business, organization, or manufacturer.

A quality management system can help prevent problems when delivering solutions to consumers. It also affects production by examining procedures such as stock management, packaging, and other operational tasks.

Defining quality assurance standards

Quality assurance standards are the policies and procedures an organization uses to ensure that its products and services meet the quality standards of its customers. Management sets these quality assurance processes to evaluate the performance of its goods or services.

Being adept at quality assurance standards gets you closer to ironing out your review process and finding the right outsourced QA providers.

Quality control vs. quality assurance

Quality control and quality assurance are two commonly confused terms. Knowing the difference between the two helps strengthen one’s understanding of quality assurance standards.

Quality Control is a measurement-based process control of a product or service for the purpose of providing confidence that quality requirements will be fulfilled. This aspect of quality management involves testing, measuring, inspecting, and analyzing a product’s ability to meet customer requirements.

On the other hand, quality assurance focuses on the processes and procedures that improve quality. Quality assurance methods typically include processes such as documentation and monitoring.

It also highlights a company’s strengths and areas for improvement.

Reasons to implement proper quality assurance standards

If you are setting up a new company, quality standards can help you develop products that meet or exceed customer expectations.

Your company’s quality assurance standards can also help weed out errors and allow for innovative and efficient product designs in the long run.

Here are some of its key benefits.

Safety

Companies that establish safety and quality measures from the onset can eliminate risks that may face both their consumers and employees.

Additionally, quality assurance standards can help drive consumer trust. This is especially important for brands in emerging industries.

Compliance

Regulations govern businesses ranging from different industries to protect consumers. This can cover different aspects, such as environmental safety and intellectual property, among others.

Meeting these specifications can be best done with standards in place to guide the process.

Control

Standardization reduces costs and increases efficiency by standardizing the process while minimizing errors and recalls. Added control can lead to faster time to market and help businesses grow.

4 types of quality assurance standards

No matter what industry you work in, there are a variety of quality control methods available. Some rely on scientific measures; others require more qualitative analysis.

The method you should use depends on your industry and the solutions that you’re offering.

1. Product standards

National and European standards provide minimum requirements for different areas where a product may be used. It offers consumers products with better quality and safety measures to protect them.

2. Management standards 

Standards help organizations to manage their activities more holistically. They describe how to achieve certain objectives or the best way to perform tasks.

Even when outsourcing managed services, like those offered by Booth and Partners, quality assurance standards come equipped with the service.

This can also apply to how effectively they delegate tasks and outsource business processes.

3. Service standards

Service standards are a set of minimum quality requirements for service delivery. They provide organizations with a benchmark from which to judge their performance and an assurance of delivery under specific conditions.

4. Process standards 

Process standards are rules and requirements that relate to the processing of a product and its components.

They define the conditions or requirements that apply to tasks such as the production, storage, packaging, and testing of products during processing.

Examples of quality assurance standards

The best-known quality assurance standards are from the International Organization for Standardization. ISO standards help ensure that products, services, and processes are built to a high quality and safety level.

They provide a framework for companies to communicate, share information and establish mutual understanding regarding quality control.

Some examples include:

• ISO/IEC/IEEE – Software Testing – Comprises test process descriptions that define the test processes at the organizational level, test management level, and dynamic test levels. It defines an internationally agreed set of standards for software testing that can be used by any organization when performing any form of software testing.
• ISO 9001 – Quality Management Systems – ISO 9001 addresses the requirements for quality management systems and guides organizations in providing products that meet customer and regulatory mandates.

Outsourcing quality assurance

Quality assurance standards are an important part of any business. They provide a framework for how your company will approach quality control and assurance.

By understanding these standards, you’re better equipped to handle any problems that arise in the future.

It’s also helpful if you have employees who work with customers directly because they can be trained on what is expected from them when providing services or products with high-quality standards.

Consider hiring a quality assurance specialist to help you maintain control of your processes. They can assist you with crafting a tailored quality assurance plan to keep your business standards at the most optimal level.

Entrusting this process to capable outsourcing professionals can help your business speed up deployment and connect with professionals. Outsourcing offers a range of benefits to enable you to provide better service to your customers.