Quality, safety and environmental management systems have a broad and unique terminology, with well-defined meanings. Sometimes, however, we note that some people use industry terms incorrectly and it is good, therefore, to try to remedy the most common misunderstandings.
The first difficulty is found in the use of the words “certification” and “accreditation” which are often used as synonyms.
Certification is a formal procedure by which an accredited Conformity Assessment Body recognizes the management system of an organization based on a series of specified requirements (e.g. in the reference standard ISO 9001:2015, if we are talking about a quality management system).
Accreditation, on the other hand, is the independent evaluation of Conformity Assessment Bodies against ISO 17021 “Conformity assessment - Requirements for bodies providing audit and certification of management systems” to ensure their impartiality, competence and consistency.
Once, therefore, a conformity assessment body is accredited to provide its services, it can certify the management system of an organization. It is therefore wrong to say that you are accredited “ISO 9001:2015”, while it is correct to say that you are certified against the standard.
Also the terms “quality assurance” and “quality control” are often used interchangeably but they have a decidedly different meaning, even if they are both part of quality management. Offering a guarantee or quality assurance means putting in place processes to ensure that products or services comply with requirements. It is the process created to ensure that quality is managed in the best way.
Controlling quality, on the other hand, means focusing on the final inspection to ensure that products or services meet requirements. Quality control is used to verify the quality of a product or service. It is therefore used to verify the quality of the output.
There is also a lot of confusion between the terms “audit” and “inspection”.
The audit is a formal assessment of a process or system aimed at determining whether or not it meets a standard defined upstream. Audits, for example, are performed to verify compliance with the reference standards through a systematic review of objective evidence.
The inspection, on the other hand, is an assessment of products or processes that involves measurements or tests to confirm that the product (or process) meets the specified requirements and/or standards.
We realize that the two terms still appear quite similar and therefore we add, for greater clarity, that an inspection may not be formal or planned but that it could also be provided for by a formal procedure. We can even consider an inspection as part of an audit, while we cannot absolutely consider an audit as part of an inspection.
Among the types of audits we find: internal audits, second party audits, third party audits and, in other areas, audits that deal with verifying the financial aspects, etc. Among the types of inspections there are instead: site safety inspections, structure inspections, workplace inspections, etc. We hope that our explanations for some selected terms that can sometimes create confusion among those with less knowledge of the matter can help you in your daily work.