A Guide to the Differences Between Quality Inspection and Quality Control
There are many ways that quality inspection or QI and Quality Control or QC differ, even though it is very subtle. These are terms that are used in manufacturing but other business sectors benefit from it as well.
Quality inspection is performed at the end of every manufacturing process. Here trained inspectors use testing, tools, and standards of customers that are very demanding. After inspection, QI informs the accountable manager if there is a problem and gives advice on how to solve the issue.
On the other hand, quality control creates products which are subject to QI. The person in charge of QC identifies and corrects issues during the development and manufacturing process. QC will be very successful if the company is focused on providing quality products as their core value and goal.
The process of QI and QC are complicated processes. There is inspection of the finished product in QI. QI is done by an inspector, a manager, a third-party testing service, or the customers themselves.
For food processing facilities, for example, poor quality items are not allowed to reach the market so they are set aside by QI. There are rejected goods that are recycled. There are checklists, visual guides, chemical testing, and other tools used to sort poor quality products from good products in a fast way.
In QC, poor quality products are prevented from being produced. The work of QC is before inspection which helps to reduce the work of QI. When QC finds an error, malfunction or weakness, it seeks and fixes its sources.
It is important to get feedback so QC reduces or eliminates QI by correcting things at the point of failure. All process points are inspected by QC so that they can find problems and repair and reconfigure the process. The source of problems include tools, talents, materials, machines, or even temperature and lighting at the workstation. If there is feedback from QI which is high-volume and high-quality, then QC can perform well.
There are businesses that have isolated the functions of QC and QI. In order to help make businesses free of error, there is already more interaction and cooperation where QI feed QC with important data.
QI is done before shipment. To avoid shipment delays, QI should only be testing a limited amount of products. They say that this is a sample that is statistically-sound. This sample is checked for workmanship, safety, functionality, and performance before delivery. Those who purchase these products also help in the process by inspecting deliveries as they arrive for their own set of standards. The management of the supply chain is improved through customer feedback. The cost of inspection must be weighed against the value of the produced goods. If you want to manage the costs as well as the processes, then you should use SafetyChain, a food quality management software.