Quality Assurance in Production: Definition & Methods

Before we talk about quality assurance:
Quality management as a superstructure

"Quality is everyone's responsibility," William Edwards Deming, the pioneer of quality management, once said. And what is everyone's responsibility should not be left to individual discretion or even chance. Quality must be managed in order to achieve the desired results.

Definition: What is quality management?

Put simply, quality management is concerned with meeting customer requirements for products or services. To this end, quality management provides specific measures and tools that not only serve to fulfill individual customer requirements. They also enable continuous process and product improvement across the board.

Phases of quality management

To achieve this, quality management makes use of five successive phases:

• Quality planning: This is where the current status in the company is recorded and evaluated and specific measures are derived.
• Quality control or quality steering: This is where the defined measures are implemented and monitored.
• Quality assurance: This is where all the measures required to achieve a certain product quality come together.
• Quality control: These are activities that are carried out in production to check the quality of a product.
• Quality improvement: The knowledge gained is finally collected and evaluated in order to make optimizations.

Quality management tools

Now the tools for implementation are still missing and here too there are established concepts. The best known are certainly the 7 quality tools that Ishikawa Kaoru defined back in 1943. These include

• Flow chart
• Check sheet
• Histogram
• Quality control chart
• Pareto chart
• Correlation diagram
• Cause-effect diagram

These 7 tools can be used to effectively prevent errors and improve processes.

Why should you implement quality management?

Don't your customers care about quality? If not, then you already have the first answer as to why you should implement quality management: Customers demand certain quality standards. And if they don't actively demand them, they will inevitably expect them.

Can you afford to make mistakes in production? Here, too, you will certainly answer in the negative. With the tools of quality management, you can reduce your error rate and save unnecessary costs due to rework, rejects or delayed delivery times.

And what about the legal framework? Can you manufacture without any legal rules or regulations getting in your way? The probability is low and quality management has the right answer here too. What's more, if your quality management system complies with the DIN EN ISO 9001:2015 standard, for example, this not only confirms your production quality. It also shows your (potential) customers that you place a demonstrably high value on quality - keyword: competitive advantage.

Quality assurance vs. quality control: definition & differences

Let's talk about our actual topic: quality assurance in production and manufacturing. Well, let's say: We need to talk about two things - quality assurance and quality control.

"Aren't they the same thing?" some people might ask. And the Internet also likes to lump the two together. Strictly speaking, both quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) are independent concepts and as such are components of quality management that differ from one another in terms of their focus and tasks.

Quality assurance is therefore the proactive, organizational process, while quality control is the reactive doing during production and assembly. In the rest of this article, we will focus on quality assurance - i.e. the measures and processes that you can establish to ensure high quality standards. We will look at the practical implementation in the form of quality control at another time.

General quality assurance tasks in production

So now we know that in quality assurance we are not talking about whether, for example, a thread diameter fits or whether screws have been tightened to the correct torque. But what are the tasks of quality assurance in production?

The tasks of quality assurance include

• the definition, planning and implementation of systematic testing concepts - including customer-specific adaptations as required
• test equipment management
• process and workflow monitoring
• Monitoring and ensuring that tests are carried out properly
• Employee training on the content, measures and objectives of QA
• initial sample test reports
• supplier evaluations
• Documentation of all measures
• processing complaints and customer communication on quality-related issues

• as well as continuous improvement processes (CIP) for long-term quality improvement

Quality assurance methods in production, manufacturing and assembly

Quality assurance in production

Let's take a look at the process-related quality assurance options you have in production. Production is much more comprehensive than manufacturing and includes all processes and steps that are necessary to manufacture a product. The methods you can use are correspondingly comprehensive.

Quality assurance in production

Manufacturing is a sub-sector of production and comprises the processing of raw materials into parts and components, which are then assembled into a final product. Quality assurance processes should also be part of production, but with specific methods.

Quality assurance in assembly

As a step in production that deals with the assembly of individual parts into a finished (partial) product, assembly is just as important as production. Here, too, quality assurance must use the appropriate methods. These can include

How to implement quality assurance in production and manufacturing

That was a lot of methods for quality assurance and you may now be asking yourself: "What do I do with them now and what is really effective?" Let's break it down again to the specific to-dos you should have on your screen - in flexible order.

• Introduce a quality management system in which all data, information, measures and learnings converge.
• Standardize your manufacturing processes, for example with Standard Operating Procedures (SOP). Standard processes established in line with quality standards are the key to continuous quality assurance.
• Train your employees in quality standards, procedures, tools and their use. Only those who know how things work and what needs to be taken into account will develop an awareness of quality objectives.
• Monitor and optimize processes. Just because processes are standardized does not mean that they run optimally. Keep an eye on them and make adjustments where necessary.
• Ensure that you receive high-quality materials and components from your suppliers. If the quality in the supply chain is poor, the end product will also be poor.
• Implement quality controls in the production process and enable your workers to carry out worker self-inspection.
• Create the greatest possible transparency and traceability in your production. This is the only way to find out for sure where the devil is at work.
• Carry out internal audits to put your processes and quality assurance measures to the test.

The next step: quality assurance 4.0

Up to this point, we haven't talked much about digital technologies. Of course, you can also tackle quality assurance in your production largely without the possibilities of digitalization. But that basically means

• You do everything by hand and write down the results.
• You document on checklists and the like and transfer everything to the system later.
• You spend a lot of time monitoring and improving processes.
• You accept media discontinuities and errors during data transfer.
• You can only identify and rectify errors with delays.

However,digitization opens up numerous possibilities for optimum quality management and error-free production. For example:

• Sensors or cameras to automate quality inspections
• Big data and data analytics for pattern recognition of error trends
• AI and machine learning for predicting possible quality deviations
• Digital twins to simulate production processes and identify potential sources of error
• Worker assistance systems to support manual activities and ensure the reliable execution of activities, including worker self-inspection

An example: Quality assurance with weasl

Our worker assistance system weasl relieves your employees of all manual tasks in production and assembly. Beyond this, it offers numerous options to support you in implementing quality assurance processes in your production. What exactly does this look like?