Q: I’m a Quality Control Inspector, my question is: as I am working as QA/QC means both works i’m carrying out, is this advantageous for me or I must keep concentration on only one side? ~Jasim~
A: Answering your question, my opinion is that, if this is your first job, working for a company where you perform QA and QC activities is an advantage for you, because doing that you are going to learn both activities and then, after you have enough experience and knowledge you can decide which one you like the most and focus your professional career on it.
However, it is not an advantage for the company. As I posted on my blog entry about this subject (read post), one person cannot perform both activities (QA and QC) because will result in a conflict of interest. In spite of that, several companies have one department performing both activities, and sometimes one person is in charge of the QA and QC tasks. This usually occurs because of many reasons, such us the company is small and is beginning to implement quality concepts; or just because they don’t know exactly the difference between them and just call everything related to quality as QA/QC activities.
Keeping in mind I don’t have enough details about how big the company you work for is or how many years of experience you have on the field, I think it is a good idea to start differentiating the QA and QC tasks you are preforming, and then help the company to understand the difference between them in order to restructure the area having people specialize in QA activities and others in QC activities.
NOTE
If you are a member of the ASQ group in LinkedIn, you can read more answers to this question by clicking here.
