Quality Assurance (QA) covers the implementation of the quality aspects during manufacturing, assembly, integration and testing. There are three main tools for doing so:

• inspections,
• non-conformance control,
• reviews. 

QA is involved in the early development and/or design of hardware. The gathered knowledge of these analysis, are both beneficial for the design engineers in the project as for QA. This results in the definition of inspection points and workmanship standards as used during the hardware phase later in the program.