The company I currently work for has a good relationship with its QA/QC departments. The reason for this is integration. All projects that are proposed and piloted are done so while consulting with the QA department. Before a project can go from proposal/experimental phase to pilot phase, the QA department works with all project leads and technical experts to comb through the procedures and documents to ensure that everything meets regulation prior to being passed to the teams responsible for the pilot scale of things. QA and QC teams are then directly involved as the study moves from pilot to clinical or production scales. This combined effort and departmental integration leads to clearer objectives, and less surprises.