what we do

THE ROLE OF QUALITY ASSURANCE

You can think of quality assurance as the activities and management processes that are done to ensure that services and products are delivered at the required quality level. The process is driven and focused on the delivery of the service or product.

Quality assurance is a way of preventing mistakes, defects and avoiding problems when delivering services or products to clients; which ISO 9000 defines as “part of quality management focused on providing confidence that quality requirements will be fulfilled”.

ISO/IEC 17020 specifies requirements for the competence of bodies performing inspection and for the impartiality and consistency of their inspection activities. The standard defines criteria for assurance of quality in the operation of organisations who perform inspection.

ISO17020, is an internationally recognized standard for the competence of inspection bodies. ISO 17020 should not be confused with ISO 9001, which is specific to quality management systems.

The ZCSA adheres to these international standards when it conducts its inspections in imports and domestic products

WHY DOES YOUR ORGANISATION NEED A QUALITY ASSURANCE PROGRAM?

Avoid Failure

Any failure in the system may result in long-term fallout: loss of confidence in service delivery, several lawsuits, and an erosion of the organisations credibility among the public. All this can be avoided if more attention is paid to quality assurance.

Create quality culture

Quality Culture can be defined as comprising three layers:

i. Quality Assurance is the first layer. It is an accumulated body of standards, regulations, and best practices that the organisation is to use to assess its processes on an ongoing basis.

ii. The second layer is a Quality Plan that lays out a set of standards, regulations, and procedures that the organisation is to follow, as well as the organisational goals and any expected risks.

iii. Finally, there is a Quality Control layer, which involves monitoring the development teams to ensure that they are adhering to Quality Assurance requirements and the Quality Plan