What is component testing?

The act of verifying and finding of defects in individually verifiable components in a software is called component testing. Eg : testing of individual modules, classes etc. It is popularly called unit testing and occasionally called module testing. In the organizations that I have come across, component testing usually required access to the code and is done using unit test frameworks and by debugging. Automation using unit test frameworks is systematic and offers a lot of benefits like ensuring code coverage, regression monitoring etc. Defects, if found, are normally fixed immediately and sometimes get fixed from the code coverage reports if not meeting the quality KPIs. However, one thing is certain - monitoring of these defects by tool is not usually done. Once, we have tried to track the defects via shared excel and it was cumbersome and the team concluded that benefits are too less as compared to efforts :). Whether or not i agree to this view is different but the point is monitoring is rare except for KPIs.