Quality assurance is the process of making sure products and services are of the highest possible quality and free from defects and mistakes from the time they're manufactured to the time they're delivered to a consumer. In business, good quality assurance leads to lower production costs, greater employee motivation, improved company reputation, and higher customer satisfaction. The process of quality assurance may involve proper planning, testing products and services to ensure they're of high quality, monitoring the production process, and addressing any newly discovered quality issues as they arise. Organizations around the world often seek the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9001–Quality Management Standard certification, as it is the highest standard for quality management in the world. It's been awarded to over a million organizations in over 75 countries.
If you study quality assurance, you can usually get a job as a quality assurance specialist, analyst, or manager in almost any industry. Some of the most common fields that require this position are healthcare, education, communications, engineering, and manufacturing of products such as food, cars, technology, and clothing. You may also find yourself working in a position in the design and development of products. Others go on to work in fields like occupational safety, pharmaceutical manufacturing, logistics, supply chain, production management, or transportation inspection.
Anyone who wants to work in quality assurance should have good leadership skills. After all, you'll need to speak up when something goes wrong and guide your team towards correcting it. You'll need to be a good communicator, a person who is highly organized, and someone who plans ahead. You'll also need to be good at problem-solving and paying close attention to details. Because quality assurance is not specific to just one industry, you'll need to understand the nature of the business where you work. For example, if you work in pharmaceutical production, you'll need a background or some knowledge of medication, particularly the technical aspects of manufacturing them.