Quality management is vital with brick and mortar or even online businesses. The ultimate goal of a business is to meet the needs and expectations of the customer by providing quality products or services. Quality must be maintained with a business in every aspect of operations. The three factors which make up quality management include control, assurance, and improvement. All three of these factors are intertwined within the process of a successful company achieving total quality management.

Quality control is a part of quality management which focuses on the requirements of the customers. This will include fault testing during design and the production of products or services. Quality control is a branch usually found in engineering and manufacturing. When a company is producing any type of product or service for another, this is vital to ensure products or services are designed to specifically meet or exceed the expectations of the customer. Quality control includes control methods such as failure testing, quality assurance, statistical control, and even company quality.

Quality assurance is another aspect of quality management a business needs to achieve in order to maintain the confidence of their product or service. Quality assurance is also known as QA. QA is branch which usually maintains customer requirements and ensures the products or services being produced by the company meet or exceed the requirements. All mistakes are eliminated at this level. QA is used to regulate the quality of raw materials, services relating to production, products and components, management, and even process throughout an organization. Quality assurance includes thorough testing of processes, products, and services.

Quality management should also include quality improvement. The goal of every company should be to consistently improve the products or services offered on a regular basis. Consistent quality is important also. Improvement in a company is broken down in many factors which include process improvement, people based improvement, and product improvement. These factors successfully incorporated can drive quality improvement and determine a company’s capabilities.

Achieving quality management is a goal companies must continually work toward on a daily basis. This is not a process that can be achieved and finalized but a constant approach. Control, assurance, and improvement are three factors that must be used in order for a business to successfully achieve quality management.