Quality assurance is one facet of the larger discipline of quality management. Managing the quality of production involves many detailed steps including: planning, fulfilling and monitoring activities. The quality assurance team is concerned with confirming that the quality requirements of a company are met.

This may seem similar to quality control, another facet of the management process. The "quality assurance" and "quality control" terms are often used interchangeably. Quality control, however, has its own specific function, and it pertains to the actual fulfillment of whatever quality requirements have been put into place.

Quality assurance encompasses the processes and procedures that systematically monitor different aspects of a service or facility. Through audits, it detects and corrects problems or variances that fall outside established standards or requirements.