Assurance of quality and integrity is the responsibility of Quality Assurance (QA). This department is involved in the creation, execution and control of systems and procedures, and application of efforts for continual improvement of quality standards. Quality Assurance department ensures compliance to the quality policy in every aspect of production and quality control. QA has specific responsibilities of establishing standards of all starting materials, in-process materials, documents, facility, systems, personnel and finished products; implementing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for operations and controls; planning and conducting periodic internal audits (self-inspection) to identify areas of improvements and take adequate actions for improvement; exercising effective controls over sanitation, hygiene and cleanliness, pest control, environmental, in-process controls, document control, deviation and change control, customer complaints, reprocessing, recalls, returns including investigation to identify root cause and remedial actions, where necessary; taking effective corrective and preventive actions on deficiencies and nonconformities arising from deviations, internal and external audits, customer complaints, deviations and incidents, unusual observations etc. and take speedy corrective actions to avoid recurrence.