I recall when QA was introduced to my workplace some 25 years or so ago. My sad conclusion was that it was more to do with records and paperwork resulting in consistent quality rather than outstanding quality. In other words, your product may not be first class but as long as it was consistently like that, and you had records to prove that approved methods were being applied, was ok.
Agreed, first it was BS5750 and in internal QA manual about 2000 pages long, then came along ISO 9001, 9002, 14001, bla bla, nice earners for the consultants and independent vetting companies, but basically you could still build crap, so long as it was fully traceable
