Why QC is Inevitable

First let me briefly define QA and QC.

QA – Activities done to prevent the defects
QC – Activities done to detect the defect

It has been argued a lot many times that it is always cheaper, economical and justifiable to prevent the defect rather than correcting the defect later time. Here I am considering this assumption as valid.

I would like to delve further that why we haven’t reached a stage where QC is not required? Why we cant have robust processes through which we can always prevent the defects? Some one may like to answer that IT industry has not yet reached to that level of maturity. But then what about the other industries? IT may be considered relatively new industry but manufacturing is far older and mature industry then what IT industry is at today.

But even the manufacturing company has not reached to the stage of Nirvana where they can close their QC department. The reason probably lies in how our brain is functioning. Our decisions are based on our feelings, prejudices, past experiences etc. and these factors deviate us to take the rational and objective decision many times. Apart from this our mood varies a lot and because of that we lack the consistency. And these kinds of factors lead to the defect in the work product.

Thus our brain is programmed to make mistakes and that is the reason we can probably never close the QC activities. What we can do at the most is we can reduce the defects through better processes.