Final answer:
Quality Assurance encompasses both the planning and implementation of administrative and technical actions to ensure product quality, as well as the specific controls in a manufacturing process to produce consistent quality products.
Step-by-step explanation:
Quality assurance (QA) is a broad term that encompasses various planned and systematic actions within a business or manufacturing environment to ensure that products or services meet certain quality standards. Option (a) of your question defines QA as including all planned and systemic technical and administrative actions necessary to assure an item is being produced at an optimum quality level. This definition highlights administrative actions and technical actions that are part of the quality assurance process.
Option (b) of your question refers to QA as the controls that are applied at each stage of a manufacturing process to consistently produce a quality product. It focuses on the practical application of quality standards and checks at different points of the production process. Both definitions are correct but cover different aspects of QA. The first is broader, including planning and systemic actions, while the second is more specific to the manufacturing process itself.