Quality Assurance

ISO 9000 standard clause 3.2.11 defines Quality Assurance as:
“A part of quality management focused on providing confidence that quality requirements will be fulfilled”

Quality assurance comprises all those planned and systematic activities in a quality system which are suitable to demonstrate that a product or service will meet the agreed requirements.

The target of quality assurance is to improve the product or service development and test processes so that defects do not occur when the product is produced.

Common methods for quality assurance are process analysis, statistical process control and audits.

Quality Assurance is a pro-active system for evaluating performance of a product against agreed standards or specified requirements.

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Quality Assurance Tools and Techniques

Affinity Diagram

Affinity Diagrams are illustrations (mind maps) used to organize and link unstructured information generated during brainstormings, discussions, meetings etc.

Process Decision Program Chart (PDPC)

Process Decision Program Charts (PDPC) are used in process development. They systematically identify necessary steps to achieve a goal and help anticipating possible problems which may occur.

Interrelationship Diagraph

Interrelationship Diagraphs are used to link and anlyze factors involved in a complex scenario.

Tree Diagram

Tree Diagrams represent hierarchies decomposed (broken down) into levels of details. Tree Diagrams direct concentration from generalities to specifics.

Prioritization Matrix

Prioritization Matrices categorize items according to their weighted criteria. It is a combination of a Tree and a Matrix Diagram to narrow down options to the most desired or most effective.

Network Diagram

Network Diagrams depict the flow of activities between tasks by displaying relationships.

Matrix Diagram

Matrix Diagrams show the connection between ideas or issues in the form of a table (matrix). A relationship is indicated at each intersection of a row and a column.