For National Quality Month, Newport News Shipbuilding’s Quality Team is sharing the elements of quality management. This week’s topic is quality control.

Once a process is in place, quality control is used to ensure that the quality plan outlined during the planning step is attainable. Measuring and testing of the products verify that all of the product requirements are met. Discovery of any mistakes or defects in the process should be made as early as possible in the process to allow for recovery of both the quality and the schedule. If the product doesn’t meet the standards in place, these discrepancies are identified and reported back to the Quality Team. The Quality Team will then analyze the defects, provide feedback to the operational team and implement processes to prevent the reoccurrence of the defect.