In both the production and manufacturing environments, companies are concerned with quality. Even if the function is office related such as accounts payable or accounts receivable, the need for quality in the finished product is pertinent. Whether you are sending a customer the finished product or a bill for a product he has already received, you want to maintain the integrity of your company by presenting a product that is as close to accurate as humanly possible. Certainly, nothing is perfect, and customers know that, but if you keep the error ratio low, you can be assured of continued business.

The roles may differ contingent upon the type of company that is involved, as will the titles with some referring to this role as a Quality Control Manager and others as a Quality Assurance manager. However a company defines the role, the responsibilities are quite similar. In product production, the quality manager's job is to make sure that the product that is produced is as free of flaws as possible, and he does this through his knowledge and expertise, often starting with the company in the role of a worker. That gives him inside knowledge about process and how it works, thus he has a realistic idea of how much work can be done during a shift with the highest quality work.

A quality manager will set policies regarding the standards for policies, and in most cases will work with the production manager in order to assure that the production standards make the quality standards attainable. The quality manager will also review past records of quality production in order to determine if the current standards are high enough to maintain good customer relations, and if they must achieve higher quality standards, whether productions standards support those differences. In many companies, a staff of quality inspectors will check products as they come off the production line to make sure that they meet the company's quality production standards.

Quality managers are common in the manufacturing and production end of a product, but in the support functions, quite often the department manager is in charge of both roles, thus quite often production and quality standards are not attainable goals. For example, a credit manager may require employees to input 40 applications per hour with an error ratio of <2%. Sadly, often those standards are set without verifying if it can be accomplished and without looking at past experience within the department. In order to attain the highest standards of both production and quality, a company needs to enlist the services of a quality manager at all levels.