Quality Assurance Job Description

In a competitive market, there is precious little that differentiates your company's products from those of the rival company. So what can you do to beat out your competitors and have your product achieve pole position in the market? Simply, give your customers an assurance of quality. By backing up your value proposition with the quality metric, you can assure your customer that the products you provide are of better quality and will not cause any troubles whatsoever for the foreseeable future. And to this end, companies employ the quality assurance officer to check out all the products once before they go into the market for sale. So what exactly does the quality assurance officer do?

Quality Assurance Manager Job Description

Like I said, to get ahead of the competition, you have to appreciate the importance of providing quality products. So, in order to ensure that the products out of the factory are fit for consumption, you need a person to check the products.

The quality control and assurance analyst's job description is devised so that it may suit the individual needs of every company. But the basics remain the same. It requires him to take stock of all the products moving from the factory to the market for consumption.

How would you define quality and on what metric? A call center's quality assurance specialist very importantly lays down the need to specify call center metrics for quality. Is it the customer satisfaction? Is it the quality of interaction? Is it the first call resolution? So the first task is to define 'quality'.

The second task is to ensure that the definition of quality is understood and internalized by the employees. It is important that the employees themselves first understand the importance and meaning of quality. Only then will they put in a dedicated effort to improve the quality of the product. So, the second task is communication of the quality definition.

The third task is testing. Which is a pretty obvious task for someone who is working as a quality officer. The job entails that he test all the products coming off the production line and check if they meet the standards set in the first step. For example, a software quality assurance engineer's job entails that the person performs the function of software testing on all the programs, applications and whatever products/services they provide to the people beforehand. Depending on the company policy, the defective pieces will either be mended or chucked out altogether.

A fourth, rather optional task of the quality assurance officer is to look into the customer feedback on the product. If he gets the vibe from the market that perhaps their customers feel that the quality standards of the company are loose, then it is his job to tighten them up and then provide the level of quality and service assurance that the customers feel they deserve.

Today, a lot of emphasis is laid, and will continue to be laid on the pursuit of perfection, six sigma production, total quality management and the use of Japanese Kaizen techniques to improve quality. Ideally, businesses are heading towards a zero-defect world. But then again quality assurance officers are here just in case!