Abstract:
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The Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) is responsible for helping to assure that products and services provided by industry on U.S. Department of Defense, NASA and international contracts comply with business and technical requirements. Where contracts include technical and management system requirements such as ISO 9001:2000 Quality Management System - Requirements, ANSI/NCSL Z540.1-1994 (R2002) Calibration Laboratories and Measuring and Test Equipment, and ANSI/ISO/IEC 17025:2000 General Requirements for the Competency of Testing and Calibration Laboratories, DCMA performs technical surveillance of supplier, and where necessary, sub-supplier operations. Customers rely on DCMA to provide confidence that major weapon systems and equipment, and items required for their sustainment throughout their life-cycles, comply with overall program objectives and contract requirements. This paper describes the new DCMA Product Assurance Policies that implement the Agency's contract quality assurance program required under the United States Government Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Part 46, Quality Assurance. It explains how the new policies utilize a performance based management approach that begins with determining and understanding customer outcomes, i.e. results that are important to customers. The new policies promote the tailoring of surveillance strategies that focus on evaluating supplier performance areas deemed to be either or both high impact activities and/or higher risk processes in order to support achieving customers' desired outcomes. The new policies support the DoD acquisition life cycle as defined in DoD Directive 5000.1, the Defense Acquisition System, and the DoD Instruction 5000.2, the Defense Acquisition Guidebook. In particular, the new policies concentrate on specific government surveillance activities to be executed during the Systems Development and Demonstration, Production and Deployment, and the Operations and Support phases of the life cycle. The primary product assurance surveillance activities are system audit, process review and product examination. The new policies also give consideration to a segmented customer base, to both the program managed and item managed environments within the acquisition process, and to the use of interdisciplinary teaming of DCMA engineering, production and quality assurance resources to execute the program. Knowledge, understanding and cooperation between DCMA and the DoD acquisition community, including customers and suppliers, are important to the success of the Agency's program as implemented by its new policies.
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