When an institution makes organized efforts to prevent mistakes and improve its products or services, those efforts are called quality assurance. Experts trace the quality assurance thought process back to medieval Europe or even ancient Egypt.

While quality assurance is process oriented and focuses on defect prevention, quality control seeks to spot defects and is product oriented. At AIT, our team handles both. 

AIT’s approach to quality emphasizes standardization, documentation and constant monitoring to ensure compliance and enable continuous improvement. It’s a comprehensive method that incorporates the following programs:

• Quality Management System (QMS)
• Corrective and Preventive Action (CAPA)
• Quality Satisfaction Index (QSI)
• Six Sigma

No. Although our quality assurance approach is well-tuned to find errors before they impact customers, it’s also set up to identify positive customer interactions (see our annual QSI survey) that we can use as examples for global service enhancements. We’ve also found that quality assurance helps improve network-wide collaboration and innovation.

As the saying goes, two heads are better than one. When you open up your processes and procedures to evaluation, it allows more teammate to take ownership of the finished product, and also leads to increased innovation.

Corrective and preventative action (CAPA), is an organizational improvement system designed to prevent internal and external errors. By identifying and eliminating root causes of external and internal issues, errors or “non-compliances,” AIT’s global Quality Assurance team utilizes CAPA methodology to drive continuous improvement across the supply chain. 

AIT’s Quality Satisfaction Index (QSI) is an annual customer survey that gathers feedback across multiple areas, including customer service, sales, invoicing, claims and the MyAIT customer portal. 

Six Sigma is a set of techniques and tools for process improvement. AIT’s Six Sigma-trained Quality Assurance teammates use this disciplined, data-driven approach to eliminate process defects. 

To best respond to the changing needs of our customers, AIT’s quality management system (QMS) defines, tracks and measures several transportation logistics key performance indicators (KPIs) crucial to meeting customer and market requirements.